
Book _^_^ 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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Swollen fortunes 



^ 



Author of— "A Crisis for the Husbandman," "Cutting the Gor- 
dian Knot," etc. 



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and the ===== — = ■& 

(problem of the Unemployed 3 

By <Ben. ipercv Daniel* * 

Contents: * 

Part I— SIGNALS FROM THE KANSAS STATE It 

HOUSE— Letter of Jan. 4, 1908, to the Topeka Capital. 3 

Part II— Extracts from "MAN VS MAMMON." 1897. V 

Part III— Extracts from CORRESPONDENCE. 4^ 

Part IV— Extracts from "A CRISIS FOR THE HUS- * 

BANDMAN," 1889. 3 

Part V— HOW? (Can We Restore an Equality of Oppor- o" 

tunity.) VS* 

Part VI— WHO? (Has the Fttwer to Do It?) ' & 

Part VII— ..j N FULFILLMENT." (See slip.) # 

PRICE 15 CENTS $ 




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7 


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1 


$200,000,000 


$100,000,000 


10 




7 




sacrifice (?) 


38 


4 


5 


this 


the 


39 


21 


6 


recinded 


rescinded 


40 




24 


elate 


elevate 


47 


7 


13 


descent 


decent 


52 


14 


2 


corporations 


corporation 


55 


15 


22 


interpretations 


interpretation 


63 


23 


24 


amendments 


amendment 


67 




30 


extra vigance 


extravagance 


68 




11 


no 


not 


68 




15 


has power 


has the power 


72 




5 


81,000 


181,000 



The following paragraph was omitted from page 65: Tl 
cuit and District Judges shall be chosen by popular vote foi 
years; and they shall not be elligible to re-election after ten 
continuous service, without an interim of not less than two 3 

LIBRARY of CONGRESS J 

Two Copies Received 

NOV 28 1903 



Qopvrlttnt entry 
CUSS **- Xty ' ,l 

oopy :»: { 




Copyright 1908 
By PERCY DANIELS 




Signals From the Kansas 
State House 



(From theTopeka Capital — excepting the quotations, the statement showing 
he relative burden of the tariff tax on the Capitalist and the Laborer, and the 
"ea to Governor Hoch.) 



It seems a little strange how short are the memories of 
Kansas politicians. 

People the country over are much interested in the great 
project of decreasing the floods and increasing the dry weather 
flow of our streams. 

President Roosevelt has stimulated public interest by classing 
it as one of the great problems — one of the main business projects 
of the earlv future. 

I. KANSAS PLEDGED. 

How many people recall the fact that Kansas as a state 
stands officially committed to almost the identical proposition 
now advocated by the President; and also to a project — just, 
speedy and certain— for raising the money by a tax on "swollen 
fortunes" for this and other vast public improvements. 

The bill providing for such works and for levying a pro- 
gressive tax on the property of all persons possessing more than 
$1,000,000 (taxing only the excess) was introduced in Congress 
five times before 1898. It was approved by the executive of- 
ficers of the state, and a Senate Concurrent Resolution of the leg- 
lature (No. 15) in 1893, an d again in 1897 — in Senate Concurrent 
Resolution No. 23 — gives the official approval of the state both 
to the great project for improving our waterways, and the scheme 
for getting the money to pay for it by a graduated tax. 

So Kansas people can find no oecassion for being surprised at 
the presentation of such a project or the appointment of a com- 
mission to recommend methods and measures for pushing such a 
vast work bv Mr. Roosevelt. 



2 SIGNALS FROM THE KANSAS STATE HOUSE 

One thing the President's outlined plans are deficient 
He suggests no process for getting the money. The Resoeutio 
of the Kansas Legislature Do. 

The bill referred to can be found in the U. S. Senate IV 
Document No. 62, 2nd. Session, 53rd. Congress, Jan., 1894, pa 
5 — In "A Crisis for the Husbandman," 3rd. edition 1891 , page 1 
and a synopsis of it in "A Sunflower Tangle Over Problems • 
Taxation," 1894. 

A defense and explanation of the measures in connecti 
with a solution of the "Flood and Drouth Problem," and pla 
for the storage of all flood water and the extension and impro\ 
ment of our natural waterways similar to the general ide 
recently suggested by President Roosevelt, can be found in t 
Congressional Record of July 7th, 1898, pages 7520-7524. 

The bill was first introduced in Congress by Mr. Clover 
Feb. '92. A little later Mr. Peffer introduced it in the Senate. 

II. WHO DOES IT TAX? 

At that time there were ten thousand persons in the Unit 
States who held over $25,000,000,000 of our national accumul 
tions, having from $1,000,000 to $175,000,000 each. This b 
proposes to tax each one of them on what he has in excess 
Si ,000,000. Many of them barely have the round million. Th 
would be exempt. This would reduce the number to be tax* I 
to the vicinity of 8,500. 

The proposed rate began with one % at $1,000,000 and i 
creased to 18% at $10,000,000. 

III. HOW MUCH. 

It would collect from these 8,500 people whom we are pr o- 
tecting in the enjoyment of the luxury of inordinate wealth, ai 
from a graduated tax on inheritances (beginning at $100,00 
the sum of $2,000,000,000 the first year. 

This sum was to be apportioned among the states ai 
Kansas' share would be about $45,000,000. 

This annual receipt would be reduced as the great fortun 
got down towards the $3,000,000 mark. Other states on t. 
same apportionment of net receipts would get as follows : Tex 
8115,000,000; Massachusetts $83,000,000; Missouri $69,000,00 
North Carolina $36,000,000; Delaware $4,000,000. 



DIFFUSING THE PROCEEDS 



IV. WHAT WILL WE DO WITH THE MONEY? 

The bill provides in section 2 1 that the proceeds of this tax 
shall be expended for three purposes : 

First. For pensions, and paying the national soldiers of 
the war of the rebellion the difference between the coin value 
of the money they were paid in and gold, with interest at six 
per centum from January first, eighteen hundred and sixty-six, 
compounding semi-annually. 

Second. For building, enlarging, or repairing canals; for 
improving navigable streams and extending the mileage of 
navigable water; for improving country roads and establishing 
a system of first class highways; for building storage reservoirs 
along or at the heads of streams, for the purpose of decreasing 
floods and increasing the dry weather flow of streams; and for 
establishing and maintaining forest parks in the vicinity of or 
adjoining the reservoirs. 

Third. For organizing, equipping, and maintaining a Na- 
tional Guard. 

Sec. 22. That pensions allowed by the United States for 
service in the war between the States shall be paid from this 
fund by draft of the Pension Bureau or its agents on the treas- 
urer of each State for pensioners who are residents of the State. 

The motive in the apportionment of the money between the 
states before the pension fund was deducted, was to equailze the 
burden of the pension account. 

For 40 years the Southern States have contributed their 
share to make up this fund, while getting but a small benefit 
relatively from it. Under this process the less the requirement 
for the pension fund, the greater amount they w r ould have for 
internal improvements; and the reorganization, the enlargement 
and the pay of State Military forces. 

V. THE "MENACE OF SWOLLEN FORTUNES." 

This measure was designed to bring about such a readjust- 
ment of economic conditions and opportunities as would terminate 
the menace of Inordinate Wealth. 

An editorial article in the Century Magazine twenty-there 
years ago, shows how great a danger this was then thought to be. 
After describing the processes by which the people were being 
imposed on and robbed and the subserviance of legislatures and 
courts to the plundering capitalists, it says : 






SIGNALS FROM THE KANSAS STATE HOUSE 

i What have the people to say about these practices? They 
) not appear as yet to have anything to say. The robber 
inces are held in high esteem. Men whose riches have been 
creased by spoiling their neighbors, are held up as shining 
amples for the imitation of our youths? So long as such 
achers of morality silently indorse such iniquities, it is not to 
: expected that people will cry out against them. But the 
ly is soon to come when plain men will clearly see that no one 
in get with clean hands, in an ordinary life time, one hundred 
illion dollars — that such an enormous pile so suddenly col- 
cted must be loot, not profit. That will be a day of reckon- 
g, indeed, for the robbers and for the judges and legislators 
id the public teachers who have been their accomplices, 
eatime the facts must be kept in mind, that we have among us 
class of men, who, in their rapacity, are bent on enriching 
lemselves by forcibly seizing the property of their neighbors, 
id that they have learned how to use, for this purpose, the 
ganized force of the state. Some means must be found for 
itting a stop to them. Unless this is done speedily, the re- 
>ect for law, on which social order rests, will not long survive. 

md fourteen years before that a writer on the North Amer- 
rleview, said: 

Even now the system threatens the central government. 
he Erie Railway represents a weak combination compared to 
lose which day by day are consolidating under the eyes of 
le unsuspecting community. Already the dis-connected 
lembers of these future leviathans have* built up states in the 
ilderness and chosen their attorneys Senators of the United 
tates. Now their power is in its infancy ; in a few years they 

ill re-enact on a larger theatre and on a grander scale, with 
^ery feature magnified, the scenes which were lately witnessed 
ti the narrow stage of a single state. The public corruption 
the foundation on which corporations always depend for 
leir political power. There is a natural tendency to coalition 
etween them and the lowest stratum of political intelligence 
nd morality; for their agents must obey, not question. They 
xact success and do not cultivate political morality. The 
)bby is their home, and the lobby thrives as political virtue 
ecays. 

Phis bill was drawn to curb the lawlessness of the opule* f 
to limit the oportunity for viciousness of the powen. 
>rs. Kansas has twice asked her representatives to push and 
Drt the measure, which would limit the "swollen fortunes" 
raise for the States to expend on Highways, Waterways, 

*The future Leviathans have come. 



A BILLION DOLLARS FOR PUBLIC WORKS 5 

Reservoirs, and Forest Parks a billion dollars a year if they 
chose to use so much of their share of the proceeds for that 
purpose. 

VI. AN ATCHISON CHAMPION COMMENT. 

After the bill had been introduced in the House, Senator 
Peffer introduced it in the Senate ; and in a notice of the measure, 
the Atchison Champion — a Republican paper — said: 

The newspapers of the country may ridicule it as they 
please, but the fact remains undisputed that Senator PefTer's 
bill for creating a fund for setting our army of idle laborers at 
work on extensive public improvements, is, next to Secretary 
Blaine's reciprocity scheme, the wisest and most statesmanlike 
measure that has ever been proposed since the war. 

It was some such step as that proposed by Senator Peffer 
that did two things for France under the reign of Napoleon III 
— saved thousands of workingmen from starvation and gave 
France, particularly Paris, the finest system of streets, boule- 
vards, parks and other public improvements in Europe. 

There are thousands upon thousands of idle workingmen 
in this country today. 

Enforced idleness, such as this large army is subjected to 
because of trust, corporate, plutocratic methods, and the large 
influx of foreign workingmen, encouraged and fostered by the 
very advocates of a high protective tariff — to protect American 
workingmen against the competition of the pauper labor of 
Europe — the Carnegies & Co. who employ cheap foreign labor 
in preference to American labor — the enforced idleness, we re- 
peat, caused by these plutocratic methods is one of the most" 
prolific breeders of vice and crime. t 

Being thus shut out of employment by private employers 
the only recourse left, as a human and socio-economic means of 
relief and protection to society, the measure proposed by Sen- 
ator Peffer is both wise and timely. 

There are a number of much needed public improvements 
upon which a fund and labor could be profitably expended, not 
the least of which is a system of well constructed highways. 
(This is one of the measures provided for in the bill), and in 
that way the three great ends would be compassed — the un- 
employed would be afforded means of subsistance, society 
would be protected from the vice and crime which idleness pro- 
duces, and the country would secure at a comparatively small 
cost what it so much needs — a well arranged system of^properly 
constructed highways. 

VII. NOT A POPULIST MEASURE. 

The scheme never became a Populist measure. It was 
brought before one State Convention (and I believe two) and two 



SIGNALS FROM THE KANSAS STATE HOUSE 

ional Conventions (1892 and 1896) and turned down by the 
dutions committee in each, except the St. Louis Convention 
96. There, after a memorable debate the Kansas delegation 
about 90) refused to let it go to the resolutions committee, 
while the Populist Legislature endorsed it T the conventions 
ised to uphold the legislature; and the measure, while ap- 
ved by 99% of the Populist voters, was repudiated by their 
vention under the senile plea of expediency — about as sensible 
L patriotic a position for a reform party to take, as that under 
ch our Republican Congress proposes to defer the considera- 
1 of tariff reform measures — till after another presidential 
lion. 

VIII. DEPOSING THE USURPERS. 

"The papers of the country may ridicule it as they please," 
5 measure would take from the fifty men who now are said to 
re the power to tie up the wheels of commerce and silence the 
eels of industry, their power to curse and impoverish — to 

1 and betray. 

A part of this gang are responsible for the present gambler's 
lie. A part of them are taking advantage of the situation to 
sngthen the bulwarks of monopoly and to increase its defensive 
aament. 

"Ridicule it as they please," this measure would force these 
y men and their companions to dispose of the bulk of their 
nopoly stock and enable the laboring masses to acquire it; 
i thereby accomplish what Judge Grosscup so urgently ad- 
:ates — "re-peopleizing the corporations." 

"Ridicule it as they may," tip's measure proposed to build 
vast system of public improvements as enumerated in the 
:tion above quoted, extending into every organized county in 
1 country, under the direction of the several states ; and to 
y all the expenses of this work by a scheme of Wealth Diffusion 
-ough a process of Progressive Taxation. 

It proposed that storage reservoirs should be built in every 
inty to hold flood water, and that canals should be built and 
tural waterways improved as funds from this source were 
ailable and circumstances required. And it proposed, too, 
at labor should always have a chance to get a job on such works 
long as the process of wealth diffusion was going on ; and in 
is way the battle-axe of starvation — now held aloft by employ- 



A JOB FOR ALL IDLE LABOR 



ers and operators at every strike — would be knocked from over 
the heads of the toiling myriads. 

IX. OTHER BENEFITS 

"The papers may ridicule it as they please," but it would 
reduce the temptation to vice among the rich and crime among 
the poor. 

It would scatter the hordes from the poverty quarters of the 
cities and give every industrious American Laborer an oppor- 
tunity to own and occupy a home of his own. 

It would release a million young women from the necessity 
of choosing between the privations of poverty and a life of 
dishonor 

These are some of the blessings and benefits the message 
signaled from the Kansas State House carried to the people; 
and if Kansas still believes in conserving our natural resources, 
and in taxing part of the loot from the pockets of the multi- 
millionaires with which to do it, she should now officially renew 
her allegiance to the project. 

Kansas Thunder, demanding a new deal in human rights, 
has swept beyond the Mississippi to the East Coast, penetrating 
New England and invading the White House. Now let her 
renew her allegiance to the project that the mistake may not be 
made of starting work on these great improvements with funds 
derived from a tax on labor. 

X. THE EXEMPTIONS OF WEALTH FROM NATIONAL TAXES. 

The $£00,000,000 invested in the battle-ships going to the 
Pacific was mostly the product of a tax on labor, as the wealth of 
the Nation pays but very little under our present system of 
National taxation toward maintaining the Federal Government. 

In 1903 the 650,000 wealthy class with 90% of the total 
wealth-assuming they consumed twice as much apiece of taxed 
commodities as the rest of the people, paid less than 2% of the 
Nation's expenses; while the latter owning but 10% of the coun- 
try's wealth, paid over 98%. Reduced to a tax on the $1,000, 
the first class paid less than twenty cents, and the rest of the 
people eighty-eight dollars. 

XI. NOW REVERSE THE PROCESS 

The Kansas people and Government of eleven and fifteen 
years ago thought, as a partial compensatory measure, these 



8 SIGNALS FROM THE KANSAS STATE HOUSE 

great public improvements should not only be made, but should 
be paid for by a progressive tax on the multi-millionaires whose 
taxes have been mostly paid for the past forty years by the 
poorer classes. The National Government now proposes that 
the improvements shall be made; but it also proposes that the 
major part of the expense shall be paid by a tax on labor. To 
this, Kansas, who first signalled from her state house an endorse- 
ment of these plans, should object and file a protest againt 
entering on these works until provision is made for collecting the 
necessary funds by a tax, both just and charitable, on the "con- 
centrated capital," the combined plunderers, and the "fortunes 
swollen to undue proportions" of the nation. 

You, Governor Hoch, are among those who have classed 
this project as "the greatest national project the country has 
ever known." Believing this, you certainly consider the support 
of Kansas' in behalf of it as important as will be the action of the 
legislature on any of the measures likely to be considered by an 
extra session if one is called. Hence in behalf of this measure as 
well as of the other important subjects for whose consideration 
you are requested to convene the legislature this winter, I add 
my petition for a special session that Kansas may renew her 
pledge to waterway improvements and that she may again urge 
Congress to raise the funds for this work and some other important 
national expenses, by a progressive tax on the holdings and 
possessions of the multi-millionaires. Also that at the same 
time the necessary amendments to the National Constitution 
may be submitted to the several states. 

That we have not kept in mind the fact that we have among 
us a class of men, who in their rapacity are bent on enriching 
themselves by forcibly seizing the property of their neighbors, 
as we were admonished to do by the Century Magazine nearly 
twenty-five years ago, is why radical corrective measures are 
necessary to meet the changed condition with which we are 
surrounded, and to curb the growing lawlessness of the oppressor 
and the oppressed. "Some means must be found for putting a 
stop to them," the same writer said; but instead they have been 
allowed to continue their forays and multiply their devices for 
plunder. 

XII. WHAT IS THE RESULT? 

We are a nation of 87,000,000 people and a result of the 
plundering by the monopolies, the forays of the Wall Street 
brigands, and labor carrying the greater burden of national taxa- 



CAST THE DEVILSTOUT 



tion, is, that less than one per cent, of the families of the country 
hold more than 90% of the national wealth; and fifty men have 
been allowed to acquire such power that it is said that they can 
block the channels of commerce and tie up the wheels of industry 
which minister to the wants and wellfare of these 87,000,000 
people. 

Free homes was one of the theories of early Republicanism. 
Now more than one half of our people are without homes. In 
New York City less than 5% are home owners, and 60,000 
deserted wives are numbered among 700 thousand families. In 
Chicago there are one half as many, and the man who has been 
the greatest factor in bringing this about, goes to Sunday School 
and tells the children and others that the great need of the present 
is for people to take Jesus into their business and into their every 
day life — to do as Jesus would do. Jesus would cast the devils 
out and He would start with the biggest. 

The present unrest and discord and turbulence are a direct 
result of the scheming and example of that class of men — a small 
body of big pirates. It is disappointment and inability to pro- 
vide, that, more than any other influence, has made the hordes 
of broken families and is rilling court dockets with divorce cases. 
Equality of opportunity is gone. Intelligent labor cannot expect 
to earn a competence in a lifetime of industrious toil ; and we are 
protecting the pirates, envying them their success and applauding 
their genius. We call them "Captains of Industry" and calmly 
watch them in their new forays in an enlarging field. 

XIII. NOW IS THE TIME TO CALL A HALT 

No man has yet honestly earned five million dollars, and 
probably not one million. A few, lacking good judgement, may 
think their fathers did; but even if that were so, the greater good 
to the greater number now requires that they should disgorge 
gradually, at least to near a two or three million mark, by a 
graduated tax, and that we put a limit on the suction orifice of 
the vampires. Not one person would be wronged by such a 
process, and the myriads would be blessed. Natural incentives 
would not be curtailed, individual ambition would not be reduced 
nor human energy crippled thereby; but whatever removes man's 
opportunity to labor is a curse to the nation; and whatever im- 
pairs his natural incentive to work is a curse to the race. 

With so many reasons to favor a progressive tax remedy — 
a process of Wealth Diffusion — can those who realize existing 



to SIGNALS FROM THE KANSAS STATE HOUSE 

conditions and their menace to National Perpetuity see any 
reasons why any but the cabal of grafters should oppose? They 
may not think they are grafters. They may not concede they are 
thieves. In fact, some of them assume to be God's chosen and 
appointed agents for outlining His plans and enforcing His will. 
Some of them think individual opportunity has not been impaired 
by their labors and sacrifice. Fair-minded observers and careful 
students know the contrary is true. 

XIV. AND KANSAS SHOULD AGAIN SOUND THE CALL 

The fifty men and their satelites who control the country's 
business, direct the efforts and plans of Congress. 

In most lines of production competition is dead. They 
have killed it. 

Competition is the great balance wheel — the Divinely or- 
dained balance wheel of human energy. 

It has got to be restored or the Republic is doomed. To do 
it the all-powerful fifty must be deposed and their fifty thousand 
allies led into paths of honest effort. 

Kansas has blazed a way. If the legislature meets they 
should be urged by the people to make a renewal of our pledge in 
support of the Progressive Tax project a part of their work. 

THE TIME IS RIPE FOR CHANGE 

"Get but the truth once uttered and 'tis like 

A star new born, that drops into its place, 

And which once circling in its placid round, 

Not all the tumult of the earth can shake. 

"New times demand new measures and new men. 

The world advances and in time outgrows 

The laws that in our father's day were best; 

And doubtless, after us, some purer scheme 

Will be shaped out by wiser men than we, 

Made wiser by the steady growth of truth. 

We cannot bring Utopia by force; 

But better almost be at work in sin, 

Than in a brute inaction brouse and sleep. 

"My soul is not a palace of the past, 

Where outworn creeds, like Rome's gray senate quake, 

Hearing afar the Vandals trumpet hoarse, 

That shakes old systems with a thunder fit. 

The time is ripe and rotten ripe for change. 

Then let it come ; I have no dread of what 

Is called for by the instinct of mankind; 

Nor think I that God's World will fall apart 

Because we tear a parchment more or less." 



The Conquering* March of Capital 

(SEVENTH PAPER) 

Man versus Mammon 

BY 

PERCY DANIELS 

EY-LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR OF KANSAS 

(Extracts containing the Petition to, and the Preamble and 
Resolutions adopted by the Kansas Legislature of 1897; also 
brief extracts from the supporting argument.) 

An Appeal from the U. S. Supreme Court decision in the 
Income Tax cases, with a Plea for conferring on Congress full 
power to tax Inordinate Wealth as Equity demands. 

SEC. I. PETITION. 

To The Honorable Legislature of the State of Kansas: 

The undersigned would respectfully represent to your 
Honorable Body that perplexing questions and serious dangers 
are menacing our long-cherished Republican Institutions. 

That the equal privileges and opportunities guaranteed by 
our fundamental law to all law-abiding citizens, and which are a 
part of the consideration in the contract between them and the 
government, are not within the reach of a majority of our people. 

That the two most essential of these guarantees which have 
been annulled through sins of omission and of commission on the 
part of the general government are: 

First. An opportunity to earn or produce a living. The 
Divine command, "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat 
bread," does not simply carry the order to work: it carries with 
it the privilege, the opportunity, the right, to do this; and he who 
denies it is preaching the doctrine of damnation as an amendment 
to the plan of salvation. Every human being who comes into 
this world is entitled to the opportunity and a place to work to 
procure the necessaries of life ; and in tins era when the aggregate 



12 MAN VERSUS MAMMON 

hours of labor necessary to supply all reasonable wants, and 
some unreasonable ones, of the total population, are not over 
three-fourths as much per capita as a hundred years ago, all 
who are industrious and frugal are entitled to some of its com- 
forts. The first purpose of Republican government's is to protect 
them in the enjoyment of that right. 

There are millions in want, and hundreds of thousands on 
the verge of starvation in this country, because government, 
while forcing them to obey both its letter and spirit, his failed 
on its part to keep its contract : 

Second. The opportunity to hold — to retain and enjoy — 
enough of the fruits of their labor and the product of their toil 
to keep them from want and from the bondage of charity in their 
declining years. 

Because our government has broken its promises to its most 
loyal and useful class of citizens, tens of mill ons of them have 
lost most of that which they had laid by for this purpose; and 
they are now being plundered of the pittance which they have 
left, at the rate of over three million dollars a day. 

That while aggregate statistics indicate a season of un- 
paralled prosperity during the last quarter of a century, their 
details tell a story of appalling injustice. The widening gulf 
between the rich and the poor which these figures show, and 
which the depression, the mutterings, the discontent and the 
uncertainty — evidences which are seen, heard and felt by all, 
except a very few — also reveal and affirm, is because government 
has assumed the authority to break its pledge and cancel its 
contract with the brawn and sinew of the country; and has 
remunerated, with constantly increasing compensation and re- 
wards, the cunning sharpers and crafty rogues who have lured 
it into its treacherous course, while keeping a confiding and 
patient people deluded by the specious arguments or placated by 
the hypocritical promises of their valets, on whom the people 
have showered honors without stint, and to whom they have 
given official power without question. 

That not only these circumstances, conditions, facts and 
events point to a coming readjustment of life's opportunities and 
economic conditions, but the deliberate judgment of many of 
our conservative and honored statesmen concede this is essential 



PETITION 13 



to national perpetuity, while others assert that under any con- 
tingencies it is inevitable. 

Your petitioners believe both propositions to be true; that 
it is both essential to the maintenance of the Republic, and that 
it is inevitable. But we believe an orderly, peaceful and con- 
stitutional readjustment to be within the limits of wise states- 
manship; and that thereby the rights of the individual to equal 
opportunities may be revived, and assured; that the rights of all 
to a chance to earn or produce the necessaries of life may be 
restored, and that such restrictions may be put upon the opera- 
tions of the forces of avarice and ambition, as will protect our 
institutions from their usurpations, and the laboring millions 
from their plundering schemes, and lawless exactions. 

And we therefore most respectfully request you, to whose 
judgment and wisdom we have voluntarily confided our interests, 
to drop your routine work long enough to consider and act on 
the accompanying preamble and resolutions. 

PERCY DANIELS, ex-Lieut. Governor. 

FRANK DOSTER, Chief Justice Sup. Ct. 

S. H. ALLEN, Associate Justice Sup. Ct. 

DAVID OVERMYER, Democratic Leader. 

W. H. MORRIS, State Auditor. 

G. C. CLEMENS, Supreme Court Reporter. 

J. W. LEEDY, Governor. 

WM. STRYKER, Supt. Public Instruction. 

A. M. HARVEY, Lieut. Governor. 

H. S. LAND IS, Warden of Penitentiary. 

JAMES SHEARER, ex-State Senator. 

THE ADVOCATE, bv J. W. Morphy, Mgr. 

JNO. H. MAHAN, District Judge. 

W. M. CAMPBELL, Railroad Commissioner. 

JNO. MARTIN, ex-U. S. Senator. 

L. C. BOYLE, Attorney-General. 

D. H. HEFFLEBOWER, State Treasurer. 

ED. S. WATERBURY, ex-County Attorney. 

W. E- BUSH, Secretary of State. 

W. P. DILLARD, Railroad Commissioner. 

J. D. BOTKIN, Congressman elect. 

W. D. VINCENT, Congressman elect. 

JERRY SIMPSON, Congressman elect. 



14 MAN VERSUS MAMMON 

SEC. Xn. A PATIENT PEOPLE. 

* * t * * * * 

It is the plunder of the masses by I ssessorsof inordinate 

wealth, and by methods as cunning and lawless as evei re warded 

the corsairs and piraiis of : ears ag - brought the 

conditions which are indigenous in Despotisms an I exotic in a 

Republic. Their existence with us is not simply a blotch, it is a 
dangerous disease Its [esters and eruptions and spreading 
rottenness, are what have brought protests and cautions and 
warnings from many public men. including several noted doctors 
of divinity. Some of these cautions have been incited by a fear 
of the result. Others, and especially those : such men as 
ex-Governor Francis, of Missouri, the venerable Doctor Holland, 

of Massachusetts >. I Governor Filigree, of Michigan, and 

Col. W. A. Phillips, a Kansas . ngi ssxrj were 

inspired by patriotism and a love of justice. 

SEC. Xm. SOME READJUSTMENT INEVITABLE. 

The evidence of these men and a hundred others I might 
name only indicates the growth of a conviction that some method 
of readjustment of life's privileges and opportunities, and of 
economic conditions is inevitable in this country. 

The time has come when labor, which includes all industrial 
and producir.. isses, must turn on its oppressors and take the 
aggressive, or supinely submit to the galling chains of a perma- 
nent bondage. 

The dictatorial control of every channel of commerce, and 
every throb of human endeavor, by capital in support of its own 
greedy and ghoulish ambitions, has become so complete and 
barbaric and so well defended by official sympathy — by legislative 
devices — and by judicial entrenchments, that the onlv escape for 
American laborers from serfdom, is for them to take the aggressive 
and take it now. 

There is not a new mechanism of industry started — not a 
labor-saving device perfected — not two blades : grass made to 
grow where but one grew before, that does not bestow greater 
privileges on capital and reduce labor's opportunitv and reward. 
The more the total hours of labor required to sapplv human 
needs are reduced, the harder the struggle oi tlKse. who carrv 



DEFECTS IN MODERNISM TO BE REMEDIE D 15 

the burden; and their dividend from the application of American 
genius to God's philosophy, is more rags and less rations. 

A readjustment that will carry relief to the common people 
and justice to the oppressed is coming. The evidence that the 
masses of the people (the 70,000,000) have lost over 6,000 million 
dollars of their capital in the last seven years, while the classes 
(the 130,000) have increased their accumulations over 15,000 
million dollars in the same time, is conclusive proof of this im- 
pending readjustment. The vast piles of the Nation's treasures 
stored in the securities and piled in the vaults of the few, represent 
the efforts and savings of the multitude. They are the booty of 
a thousand forays of the pirate chiefs. The processes that are 
supporting this spoliation are going to be stopped. In the name 
of the "Great Jehovah and the Colonial Congress," if other 
authorities fail, some of this plunder will be replevined. These 
ill-gotten piles of capital will be attacked either by the leveling 
forces of disorder, or by the mild and peaceful process of read- 
justment by taxation. One or the other of these is just as in- 
evitable as the freaks of the North Wind, or the tireless surge of 
the waves at Point Judith. Today we have the opportunity to 
adopt and enact the peaceful process. Tomorrow that chance 
will be gone. Then the deluge. 

A readjustment is coming. Fear it, deplore it or welcome 
it as we may, it is inevitable. Increasing turbulence and disorder 
are but the harvest from increasing injustice and suffering. 
Philosophers who are delving among the cobwebs of the past, can 
see it; and those who are building castles for the future, will, if 
they are wise, include in their calculations this inevitable read- 
justment of opportunities, of conditions, of burdens and blessings, 
unless they are willing to admit a race degeneracy which they 
share. 

SEC. XIV. WILL IT BE ORDERLY OR VIOLENT? 

This process will be orderly or violent, as the energy and 

temper of the contending forces are wisely guided and restrained 

by the arbitration of law; or stupidly permitted to waste their 

force and consume their substance in hostile efforts to control or 

to crush each other. 

* * * * **#* 



i6 MAN VERSUS MAMMON 

SEC. XVIII. IN HOSTILE ARRAY. 

The industrial armies of the Nation are gathering between" 
the hosts of Pharaoh and the Red Sea. They are a multitude in 
numbers but puny in defensive force because disorganized. The 
day is past when the waters will divide to let them escape. They 
have the weapons of their own salvation, and they must organize 
and turn on their pursuers or go into indefinite bondage. The 
flesh pots of Egypt, with their savors and allurements, may tempt 
and seduce some weaklings who cower before these hosts and 
fear the alternative. If in that way we lose a corporal's guard 
for asserting our rights and demanding their recognition, in offer- 
ing labor a certain opportunity for relief and. independance, 
beyond the reach of Plutocracy's mandate or artillery, we Will 

swap every wavering squad for an "Ironsides" division. 

He******* 

Then too will be revived and reenacted for the law-abiding 
Lambs of Labor, and the lawless Lords of Lucre, two of the fun- 
damental principles of Judaism and Christianity, the two greatest 
axioms of human rights: For the first. "IN THE SWEAT OF 
THY BROW SHALT THOU" (always have opportunity to) 
"EAT THY BREAD." 

And for the second, "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL." 
But whether or not these old time and seemingly obsolete 
laws are revived and again enforced, of one thing we may all rest 
assured: That a readjustment of opportunities and economic 
conditions is coming in the United States. It is inevitable. A 
peaceable process is still a possibility, but it cannot long remain 
so. That is a process which will start the engine of taxation to 
eating into inordinate accumulations of wealth. If the ministers 
want to still a storm they should plead with the winds and not 
the waves. They waste their breath in saying to the revelers, 
"Don't strut:" and to the starving, "Don't squeal." Human 
nature is in as full play in one case as in the other. They should 
talk of remedies — of measures to abolish the crime of poverty 
and wash away the sin of want. The laborers should be given 
employment. Every one of them is entitled to it. Turning out 
vagrants by the million is a serious crime. To stop it I can see 
no better way than to lay a heavy tax on inordinate wealth — 
the greater wealth above some definite line, the greater tax — - 
and expend the proceeds in the employment of all idle labor on 



GREAT CHANGES INEVITABLE 17 

public works of general utility such as roads, canals, water 
courses and reservoirs ; and in paying the pensions ; thus relieving 
the treasury and the masses of that burden. If any one can sug- 
gest a more feasible or a more equitable method, he cannot serve 
his country better than by making it public. 

SEC. XIX. A LOST PREROGATIVE 
^ . Under the latest construction put upon the contsitution, 
the people are prohibited from putting a tax on inordinate 
wealth, as such, a right which they enjoyed, and exercised at 
their pleasure for a century. So in a Republic we are prohibited 
from using a method of lightening the burdens on labor, which 

is used by all the great monarchies of Europe. 

* * J * * * * * * * * 

SEC. XXII. A COMING AWAKENING. 

******** 

We are now moving rapidly toward an awakening. The 
leaven of education spreading among the people will continue 
its work. It will continue to incite them to awake. It will 
continue to uncover the injustice of plutocratic rule, and to 
gather the force to correct it. It will continue to pull the moss 
from the fossils and demagogues of the oligarchy, that the brand 
on their backs may be seen. It will continue to expose the 
methods by which they are now enabled to tax labor by their 
fiat, the stupendous sum of 2,000 million dollars a year for their 
personal use and benefit. 

SEC. XXIII. REPUDIATORS, TRAITORS AND ANARCHISTS. 

It will continue to show that the great repudiators, the 
great traitors, the great anarchists of the country sit in their 
council or are numbered with their vassals. 

And it will continue to show that they must be disarmed, 
if liberty is to be restored. So let us hope that this leaven will 
speedily stir us to decide on the best way to accomplish this, 
and drive us to add works to our faith, and enforce measures that 
will peaceably depose the pretenders; that will offer to every 
American freeman, independence and a home; and that will 
again make the Nation, "the land of the free and the home of 
the brave." And hoping, let us each resolve to add our mite to 
the forces gathering for the suppression of the oligarchy and the 
re-establishment of constitutional liberty, that this change may 
be consumated before the tyranny of capital has convinced 



i8 MAN VERSUS MAMMON 

• 
the watching, anxious patriot, that we have passed the line where 
the duty of loyal citizens to condone injustice and to quietly 
submit to persecution ceases, and the true patriot and the Chris- 
tian soldier hear the call of duty and the voice of charity inciting 
them to meet the tyrant before the court of last resort, and depose 
the pretender by physical force. 

God's law is for mankind. His gifts are for the million. 
Drones, peacocks and butterflies are the tares of our civilization. 
If civilization offers its best gifts only to the drones, peacocks 
and butterflies, it is a curse, and its endowments are a fraud. If 
civilization offers less opportunity for the millions to enjoy His 
gifts, and for mankind to find shelter under His law, than bar- 
barism, think you He would intervene to stay a flood of barbarism 
now, any more than when mighty and majestic Rome went 
down? When the cry of "Bread!" floats towards the skies from 
a crowd of struggling, starving men, as a rule they are famishing 
on account of the absence of something more essential than 
bread — and that is justice. 

Is this the kind of repudiation, or anarchy or treason that is 
disturbing the capitalistic junto, by asking for God's commands 
to be executed and government pledges to be fulfilled? 

They may well call us repudiators. We are such. Not those 
anxious or willing to repudiate honest obligations; but we advo- 
cate repudiating the sophistries of capitaistic anarchy, and the 
paganism of plutocratic avarice. 

One unquestioned fact we should all remember : that human 
judgment is a victim of mutations. It has always been cumbered 
with the infirmities of fallibility. The heretics and cranks and 
traitors of one generation in the world's history, have often 
become teachers and heroes to the next. 

SEC. XXIV. AN INVITATION TO EXILED JUSTICE. 

Four years ago Kansas set her face squarely towards meas- 
ures that would scatter the gathering storm-clouds and correct 
these wrongs by a legal and peaceful readjustment through the 
channels of taxation, by resolution of her legislature and petition 
of her state officers, asking Congress to tax inordinate wealth — 
not the proceeds derived from its use, but the accumulated 
capital itself — enough to employ all idle labor on public works 
of general utility, such as roads, watercourses, reservoirs, and 



PREAMBLE TO RESOLUTIONS 19 

parks, and to pay all pensions and other war charges. The 
measure then indorsed was in direct conformity with the recom- 
mendation of Thomas Jefferson.* 

9£C 5jC 3JC - 3JC 9|C 9fC Jft 

SEC. XXXI. SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 23. 

Whereas, With an abundance of all the necessaries and com- 
forts of life in the country, millions of our loyal and industrious 
people are in want, and hundreds of thousands are homeless, and 
tens of thousands are starving ; with an abundance of work to do, 
the means that should do it lying idle, and the laborers that are 
anxious to do it roving the streets, and drifting into the ranks of 
the criminals; and 

Whereas, This state of affairs is the result of unwise political 
policies, of oppressive commercial practices, and of discriminating 
financial measures and transactions, many of which have been 
in open violation of statute law, and all of which have violated 
the higher law; and 

Whereas, Through such lawless and arrogant practices, 
capital has gradually been brought under the control, and not 
only the control but ownership of so small a circle of individuals, 
that they are able to enforce a thorough system of co-operation; 
and this positon of vantage has enabled them to force labor 
to work under a system of competition. Its congestion in small 
areas and in few hands, to say nothing of the crimes by which 
this has been accomplished, has impaired its vitality, so it cannot 
render the service to the nation it would if it was in more hands; 
nor is this question of service to the people or the community one 
that enters into the plans of its manipulators in this circle. 
"How many men can I dispense with and curse, "rather than "how 
many can I employ and bless," is one of the problems they have 
continuously studied. The more idle the less they must pay 
those who work. The idle millions alone enable the capitalists 
to hold the battle ax of starvation above all who labor for wages ; 
and * * * * 

Whereas, A prerogative which the people had enjoyed and 
exercised at their pleasure for over a hundred years, becoming 
theirs by right of possession and undisputed use, had it not come 
within the concessions of our written law, has recently been an- 

•See "A Crisis for the Husbandman" p 133 



20 MAN VERSUS MAMMON 

nulled and wiped out by the juggling decision of a judicial 
sycophant; and 

Whereas, Thirty years ago, inordinate wealth and corpora- 
tions were paying more than one-half of the expenses of the 
national government; and under corrupt influences and with 
broken promises, this burden was transferred from the shoulders 
of the men who derived the greater benefits from the war to the 
backs of the common people, the release from taxation of the 
wealthy by changes in the tax laws having reached a sum amount- 
ing to over $200,000,000 a year in 1870, and whose aggregate 
brought down to the present time exceeds $6,000,000,000, and 
with interest added reaches 15 per cent, of the country's total 
wealth, all of which has been wrung from the toiling millions for 
the benefit of unscrupulous capitalists and financial pirates; 
and 

Whereas, The recent phosphorescent and spasmodic decision 
of the supreme court changes what has heretofore been a per- 
mission to exempt inordinate wealth from a special tax, into a 
command to do so ; giving it an immunity in a Republic unknown 
to the monarchies of Europe; and * * * * 

Whereas, Other encroachments on the vested rights and 
God-given opportunities of the masses by the lawless designs and 
greedy purpose of co-operating capitalists, are now taking several 
times as much per year from their savings as the repeal of the 
taxes on wealth; and 

Whereas, No permanent return of prosperity is possible until 
the ability of the masses to purchase and consume is increasing 
instead of decreasing ; and 

Whereas, The present official construction put upon the tax 
provisions of the national constitution prohibits the taxing 
power from considering in the distribution of all public burdens, 
the first principle of equitable taxation — that of ability to pay; 
therefore be it 

Resolved, By the Senate of the State of Kansas, the House 
of Representatives concurring therein, That we, the legislature of 
the state of Kansas, request and petition the congress of the 
United States to submit to the legislatures of the several states, in 
compliance with article number five of the federal constitution, 
a proposed amendment to the same, conferring on congress full 



RESOLUTIONS 21 



power to tax inordinate wealth, or its proceeds and revenues, 
and also all incomes, by such methods and in such amounts as in 
its judgment would meet the requirements of equity: Provided, 
That all incomes of less than $2,000 a year, and the property of 
every individual whose aggregate possessions or wealth is less 
than $200,000 be exempt from the operation of any law for levying 
the said special tax. 

Resolved, That the accumulation of inordinate wealth, which 
has become a detriment to the masses and a menace to our insti- 
tutions, should be retarded, and its evil influences mitigated, if 
not wholly dissipated, by graduated taxation. 

Resolved, That we approve the propositions of a bill (H. R. 
8618) now before congress, for that purpose, which begins with a 
one per cent, tax on individual possessions exceeding $1,000,000, 
taxing only the excess above a million; increasing the rate two 
per cent. (2 per cent.) at $2,000,000; five per cent. (5 per cent.) 
more at $5,000,000; and ten per cent. (10 per cent.) more at $10,- 
000,000, a proposition which has already been approved by a 
large majority of the voters of Crawford county, and was in- 
dorsed by the legislature and state officers of 1893. 

Resolved, That we favor the levying of such a tax, and the 
appropriation of the proceeds of it as provided for in the said 
bill — First, to the payment of pensions, the principal of, and the 
interest on, the public debt: Second, that the residue be divided 
among the states, either according to population which 
is the way the constitution apportions direct taxes; or 
according to population, wealth and area combined; and 
that the states then use it in the employment of all 
idle labor, on public works of general utility, such as roads, 
reservoirs, water-courses, canals and forest parks; and to paying 
the expenses of the state military establishments ;but no part of 
this fund to be used for the latter purpose until every citizen of 
the state wanting work is employed at not less than one dollar 
a day for eight hours work. 

Resolved, That a copy of the preceding petition, preamble 
and these resolutions be sent by the secretary of the state of Kansas 
to the presiding officer of every state senate and house of repre- 
sentatives in the nation, with the request that they — the said 
legislatures — unite with Kansas in asking congress to submit 
such a proposed amendment to the constitution, to the several 



22 MAN VERSUS MAMMON 

states for their consideration and action ; and also for the purpose 
of testing, developing an interest in and promoting a familiarity 
with the application of the initiative and referendum theory to 
the direction of government policies. 

Resolved,That our senators be instructed and our representa- 
tives be requested to urge the reference of such a proposition to 
the states at once, that, in case the present legislatures should 
fail to represent the popular wish on this question, succeeding 
legislatures may be chosen with reference to this problem of 
putting an equitable share of public burdens on vast accumula- 
tions of capital. 

SEC. XXXIII. SHALL WE HAVE A NEW CRUSADE? 

The foregoing Resolutions were introduced in the Kansas 
Senate in connection with the Petition that opens this article, 
on Feb. 25, 1897, by Mr. Ryan of Crawford county. They were 
called up for consideration February 27, and adopted by the 
following vote: Yeas 20, nays 9. * * * * 

March 2nd, the Resolution came up in the House. * * * 

The roll was called, with the following result : Yeas 68, nays 
40; absent or not voting, 17. * * * * 

By this act the Kansas legislature offers to the laboring 
masses a chance to force a readjustment of opportunities and 
burdens; to drop an effective bomb of readjusting taxation into 
the camps of labors plunderers, that will shake the oligarchy 
out of its fortifications and help to call those who compose it 
back to decent methods and honest effort. 

We need a Crusade again, to smash the fossils of mouldy 
tradition and loosen the grip of perverted precedent. We need 
to advocate measures, and prove our allegiance to them, that the 
millions can see mean certain relief to them instead of a doubtful 
tender to posterity. They are too tired of waiting for relief, to be 
interested or amused by any quibbling over trivial tariff changes, 
or the stupid efforts at doctoring the currency, first by bleeding 
and then with hypodermic injections. 

SEC. XXXIV. SIGNALS FROM THE KANSAS STATE HOUSE. 

Relief is what they want. It is what they demand. They 
have been gulled and plundered too long to be patient. They 
are tired of the intricate structures of tradition and precedent 
tnat sustain policies and methods, whose only dividend to them 



LABOR'S BURDENS MUST BE LIGHTENED 23 

is more rags and less rations. They demand a change, and it 
must be granted. 

Kansas has planted her guidons on a line that will bring it, 
in the above resolutions. * * * * 

SEC. XXXV. WHERE TO STRIKE IS THE MESSAGE IT BEARS. 

Recent events and rapidly changing conditions are telling us 
more and more plainly, that other methods than those sufficient 
a hundred years ago, must be adopted to protect people in the 
enjoyment of the rights accorded them by our fundamental law; 
and especially to protect them from the oppressions of the im- 
mense accumulations of capital which the many have earned 
and the few have got. 

We pass laws against the trusts; and the trusts increase. 
The acts are purposely defective, or the officers refuse to enforce 
them. We cumber our statute books with penalties for minor 
crimes, and they steadily increase. There are better ways to 
attack both of these evils. Under present conditions both will 
increase. We might as well legislate against sunshine, as to 
enact that men with the means and opportunity shall not com- 
bine. * * * * 

The power by which they exist offers their only vulnerable 
point. Stupendous aggregations of wealth constitute that power 
and the action of the Kansas legislature says, that is where we 
w T ill attack. This is the only way they will ever be disturbed, 
without bloodshed, and it will be found a better way than to 
cumber our statutes with "Thou shaft nots." 

SEC. XXXVI. WORK FOR THE IDLE, THE KEY. 

There is a better way to reduce the wrongs of the criminals 
than statute penalties and stone walls. In the cases of a majority 
of them, the public may have been the original aggressor. Kan- 
sas proposes that we try the better way. We would stop stealing 
and the need for soup houses, food distribution and cast off 
clothing, by enabling men to live comfortably without them. 
We would scatter our army of vagrants by enlisting them as 
industrials and keeping them busy on public works in every 
organized county; and we would pay them all by a tax that 
would rout the trusts and gradually replevin the power — the 
ill-gotten millions — of the plutocrats. We would relieve an army 
of usurers from duty by qualifying the masses to live without 



24 MAN VERSUS MAMMON 

borrowing — by enabling them to lend instead of forcing them to 
borrow. That is the message we are signaling — the message 
now going from our State House to every other state legislature. 

The first thing to do to accomplish these great changes, is 
to find employment for the idle millions and remove them from 
competition with those now at work, and pay them good wages 
by a tax on inordinate wealth as proposed in the measures sup- 
ported by the Kansas state government. That is the better 
way than driving men to crime by forced idleness — than soup 
houses or work-shops for vagrants — wmich Kansas is signaling 
to her sister states. 

Should enough of them join in the demand to force a test of 
the better way, twelve months of experimental operation would 
put every industrious laborer in the nation, above the temptation 
to barter his ballot for beer, or to sell his sovereignty for bread. 
They would then possess both the knowledge and the independ- 
ence to fairly decide whether the cause of Justice would be better 
served by measures more conservative or more radical. 

SEC. XXXVII. LET MAMMON PAY THE BILL. 

It would take an immense fund to employ all idle labor and 
furnish the appliances for their work, but the legislative resolu- 
tions provide for that feature in supporting a project for a grad- 
uated tax, (as recommended by Thomas Jefferson) on the prop- 
erty of all millionaires. The proposed rates begin at i per cent, 
at $1,000,000, and increase to 18 per cent, on fortunes exceeding 
$10,000,000. * * * * 

The imposition of this direct tax on property, would not 
under the Kansas resolutions, interfere with a tax on all incomes 
down to $2,000 a year if Congress decided that the demands of 
equity or the necessity for more revenue required it; but this 
schedule alone would by taxing about 8,500 persons, raise a 
sufficient sum to not only employ all idle labor as proposed, but 
to pay all pensions and the interest on, and finally the principal 
of the public debt. It will also enable us to decide the great suit 
now pending, in behalf of the plaintiff — MAN. 
* *** ###* 



THE PEACEFUL WAY 25 



SEC. XL. THE CONSISTENCY OF CHANGE. 

Emerson says: 

"Speak now what you think in hard words; and tomorrow speak 
what tomorrow thinks in hard words, though it contradicts everything 
you said today." 

The endorsement of such a project by Kansas state officers, 
and the favorable action of her legislature, offers to every one of 
the industrial classes, a specific, a certain, a speedy and an 
equitable opportunity to escape from the wilderness of civilized 
serfdom and enter the Promised Land of Republican freedom. 

It now remains for them to say by their acts, whether or 
not they have the sturdy manhood, the desire for Liberty, the 
love of Justice to accept it. 

"Awaken ye toilers! Arouse from your dreams! 

Put your ballots together to stop the huge streams 

Of booty that flows to the coffers of wealth, 

From the pockets of labor, by channels of stealth; 

Unceasingly flows in flood or in drouth, 

To plunder the toilers of the North and the South. 

"This is the message of Paul Revere, 

His cry of defiance and not of fear. 

'Tis his startling call from that famous affray, 

To the tax-plundered toilers, — the slaves of today." 

— From the Midnight Message of Paul Revere. 



Extracts from Recent Correspondence 



To HON. CHAS. F. SCOTT, M. C, 2nd Kansas District 

Narragansett Farm. 
Girard, Kan. 6-18-07. 
Hon. Cha's. F. Scott, Iola, Kan. 

My Dear Friend : Since the President has appointed a commission 
to do what I advocated in my paper as a state delegate to the National 
Irrigation Congress of '97 for solving the flood and drought problem, I 
often wonder if you took my article to him as I requested in 1904. His 
points on making the waterways competitors of the R. R's. are quite 
similar to some paragraphs in my paper. (See Cong. Record 55th 
C. 2nd S. P. 7522, last 1-3 of 1st column. Also p. 7523, 1st column, 
next to last par. beginning "The best adjuster of R. R. rates is water 
transportation. ' ') 

On the use of progressive Taxation as a remedy for present injustice, 
disorder and growing lawlessness, he is coming my way faster than any 
other public man in the country. He now supports an income tax, an 
inheritance tax and a corporation license tax — all progressive I believe — 
and thaf'swollen fortunes"(not very different from "inordinate wealth") 
be not only controlled but reduced. An income tax won't reduce them; 
nor an inheritance tax for present possessors. A progressive property 
tax will; hence he must favor the property tax. 

Do you ever think of Feb. 10th, '93 in the Senate — "Starting a hot 
wind!" "What we pay for!" et cetera? Now if handy take down your 
copy of "Crisis Lectures" and turn to page 1 13 — "The Coming Billionaire 
He Will Not Come." * 

Perhaps I had figured more closely than any of you surmised. If I 
had not thought so, I should not have sacrificed time and means, 
strength and friends in my efforts to induce others and help others to 
see what I saw ; but I never expected to have so powerful an ally as 
President Roosevelt; nor that any President would have both the 
sense and the nerve to recommend such measures, who had not been 
elected on a platform demanding them. 

Corruption and intrigue prevented the Populists from carrying 
them to the White House. The Republicans have done so unwittingly; 
and so I praise the Lord "who works in a mysterious way." 

Yours very truly, 
Percy Daniels. 



CORRESPONDENCE 27 



His Reply 

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE 
House of Representatives U. S. 

Iola, Kansas, June 22nd, 1907. 
Hon. Percy Daniels, 

Girard, Kansas, 
My Dear Friend : 

I am just in receipt of yours of June 18th, which I have read 
with much interest. There is no doubt that sentiment has drifted very 
far in your direction and you are entirely warranted in the self congrat- 
ulation which you express that veiws uttered by you many years ago 
are just now finding acceptance with the leading statesmen of the 
country- This fact does great credit to your foresight and that 
it is not to your personal or political advantage is one of the penalties 
paid by men who see farther ahead than the majority of their generation. 
I have heard men classified as those who are right too soon, those who 
are right too late, and those who are right at just the nick of time. You, 
and the Populist party in many particulars, seem to have had the mis- 
fortune, to be right too soon — when the country in general was not 
ready to take the steps you advocated. Our Democratic friends have 
generally had the misfortune to be right too late — after the things 
they approved had been done in spite of their opposition. The Re- 
publican party seems to have been pretty lucky in being right at the 
right time. * * * 

*Some day when you have a little time I wish you would let me 
know how you reconcile your idea of progressive taxation with the 
equal taxation article of the Constitution. If you happen to have 
been more industrious and more prudent than I have and acquired a 
hundred thousand dollars whereas I have one thousand, why should 
you pay a greater percentage of tax than I do? * * * * 

Assuring you that I am always glad to hear from you, and with 
best wishes, I am, Sincerely yours, 

Chas. F. Scott. 

COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE 
House of Representatives U. S. 

Iola, Kansas, July 27th, 1907. 
My Dear Governor : 

I have been away a great deal of the last two weeks and my secre- 
tary has been away all the time, hence the delay in replying to yours of 
the 10th. 

Answering now I do not remember definitely whether I took 
your article on the Flood and Drouth up to the President or not, but 
I think the chances are I did not. The President is without doubt the 
busiest man in the United States and I make it a point never to take 
up a moment of his time with a matter which is not immediately before 

'See p. 20, Resolution No. 1. 



28 MAN VS MAMMON 

him for consideration or settlement. While I have no doubt he would 
have been interested in your views, yet it was not anything which he 
could have taken action upon and I did not feel as if I should occupy his 
time with it. 

I note that your reform in the matter of taxation, according to 
your own judgment, seems to depend upon an amendment to the 
Constitution. Some wise man has said that the Constitution of the 
United States, except in the matter of the first amendments which 
were really put in to supply generally acknowledged omissions, the 
Constitution never has been amended and never will be amended 
except by war. I am inclined to think he is right, At any rate, great 
measures such as Woman Sufferage and the election of United States 
Senators by the people, have been urging an amendment to the Consti- 
tution for many years and have had behind them a tremendous senti- 
ment and yet nothing has ever been accomplished. I really believe 
that whatever reforms are achieved in the way of taxation will have to 
be under the Constitution as it now exists. 

Hastily, but very cordially yours, 
Chas. F. Scott. 
Hon. Percy Daniels, 

Girard, Kansas. 



From Ex=Jusiice S. H. Allen of the Kansas Supreme Court 

Topeka, Kan., January 14, 1908. 
General Percy Daniels, 

Carthage, Mo. 
Dear Governor: 

I was out of town Saturday and did not get your first letter til 
yesterday. I am now in receipt of your second letter, containing 
the article referred to which I am now frowarding to Mr. Chase with 
the request that he give it a place in full in the Capital. * * * * 

You ask me why it is that you have made so little impression 
in the advocacy of your ideas, manifestly of very great importance 
and clearly and forcibly presented. I think Congressman Scott answers 
the question very well. I might put it in different language. You do 
not work along the lines of least resistance, but work your battering 
ram against a ledge of solid rock. This may bring about the best final 
results, but the end of the battering ram is likely to be sadly worn 
before there is any perceptible progress. 

Your scheme of taxation has in view what to my mind is a most 
laudable end, but I am inclined ot think the road you select is about 
the most difficult and impassible of any leading in that direction. 
First and foremost in your way is the constitutional provison that 
"No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion 
to the census or enumeration hereinbefore directed to be taken." * I 
think there can be no doubt that all the courts would hold that your 



CORRESPONDENCE 29 



scheme of taxation is a direct tax, bearing unequally on the state, and 
the citizens thereof, and inhibited by the constitution.* Another 
difficulty, equally great in the present state of public opinion, is a 
general antipathy to any scheme of direct taxation, no matter how 
beneficial, As Congressman Scott says speedy results can only be 
hoped for when there is a general drift of public sentiment not merely 
in the direction of your ultimate object, but in favor of the expedient 
you advance for the accomplishment of that object. 

I have had substantially the same experience that you have 
in advocating another remedy, not so thorough as the one you pro- 
pose, but which has no constitutional barriers to overcome, viz, a 
change in the laws of inheritnace, making the state the residuary 
legatee of all multi-millionaires, and limiting the amount that any 
person might take by inheritance to such amount of property as would 
give him a fair start in life. I find that even ardent reformers are 
mostly too strongly prejudiced against any scheme of this kind to give 
it a hearing or seriously consider it. 

In looking over the whole field and determining what are the 
really greatest evils in the organization and uses of government, I 
have become most firmly convinced that first and foremost of all, and 
greater than all others combined, is the evil of militarism, and that the 
greatest reform now considered is that of a general federation of the 
world, which will dispense with great armaments, settle all inter- 
national controversies, by reason instead of war, and turn the great 
armies of the world into useful and productive fields, instead of keeping 
them in training for the destruction of each other and the infliction of 
misery on the balance of mankind. I think it would be even better 
than your taxation scheme, if the money now being expended on the 
navy and fortifications were used to carry out your solution of the 
drouth and flood problems. 

I am painfully aware of the defects of all systems of administer- 
ing justice, of the disposition of lawyers and courts to decide cases 
on mere artificial and unjust technical grounds, rather than on the 
merits of the cause. I have expended much time and effort to obtain 
a revision of our code of procedure which will eliminate most of the 
foolishness in our system, and hope to succeed in my efforts when a 
new legislature convenes, but not at this special session. If my health 
and strength hold out I mean to make a similar effort for the reforma- 
tion of the federal judiciary and I hope that others may in the near 
future give to the* Hague tribunal substantial power and a sensible 
procedure under which controversies between nations will be settled as 
are those between the states of our Union. This is my dream of the 
future, to which I am more attached than to all other conceivable 
reforms combined. * * * * 

Very truly yours, 
S. H. Allen. 

'See p. 20, Resolution No. 1. 



30 MAN VS MAMMON 

g-^. -rr\ ^ r - Taylor was formerly a State 

OtaiOp T ami Fepresentative and Senator, also 

_ , . ~ , „ President of the State Board of 

Edwin Tayior, Prop- Agriculture. 

Edwardsville, Kansas, March 4, 1908. 
Gen. Percy Daniels, Kansas City, Kansas. 

My Dear Governor : — I have read your article and have been inter- 
ested in it. * * * I have thought much about your "remedy", the 
Graduated Tax, and one or two considerations I will submit : * * * 

There is much rough road to go over before we come to that. If 
that proposition could be made effective tomorrow, it would mean war. 
The popular mind isn't ripe for it. It doesn't see the necessity for it. 
It is being educated very fast, and it's likely that in the near future it 
will learn much faster. When one considers how far the nation has 
travelled on this road since you were Lieut. Governor, one gets a notion 
of the value of patience that he didn't have before. I am free to own 
that, for the present, my chief concern is for the ways and means of 
installing Democracy. Chief among those ways and means I regard the 
Primary Election Law, the Initiative, the Referendum and the Right 
of Recall. All of these are heart thrusts at that baneful institution, the 
political party, which though not strictly the seat of all our woes, is 
nevertheless to plutocracy what the hair was to Samson. In the last 
analysis, as I regard it, the irrepressible conflict now on is between the 
corporation and the individual. Millionaires have ridden to wealth, 
almost exclusively, on the backs of the (corporate) monsters. They 
have not been without their uses and their lessons. What I look forward 
to with intense anticipation is the substitution of the state itself for 
those creatures of the state. Every blow at the corporation I regard as 
a stroke for salvation. * * Expecting to see you stand firm at your 
post and not back out, like Lawson, I remain, 

Sincerely your friend, 
Edwin Taylor. 
From William Allen White. 

Emporia, Kan., June 18th, 1904. 

My Dear Governor; — I was glad to get your letter with enclosures. 
(The enclosures referred to were two sheets of the Crisis lectures of 1889). 
How the world is wagging. Fifteen years ago they would not have 
interested me, nor the average prosperous citizen. Today the subject 
appeals to every one. I suppose it is always that way. People probably 
thought John the Baptist was a crank; they were so sure that Christ 
was crocked that they crucified him. This is a curious world. 

The evils of our civilzation — its many injustices and its chronic 
ailments — may not be remedied by any law, nor by any movement, 
until the law is inspired by a change in the character of the people as 
individuals; and until the movement represents something more than a 
desire to reform someone besides one's self. So long as people buy 
trust made articles because they are cheaper than other similar articles 
made by honest hands in honest shops, there is no real working public 
sentiment against the trusts, and law against them will fail. But when 



CORRESPONDENCE 31 



the people — rather, when the individual man, is willing to say that he 
will sacrifice ten or fifteen cents a day getting goods not sticky with the 
blood of his fellow creatures, made by murdering opposition and com- 
petition — then the market for trust made goods will fail and the trust 
will go out of business. Slave made goods would not sell in America. 
Convict made goods don't sell well. There is real sentiment against 
these things. But the only sentiment against the extortions of capital 
in industry — and there are such extortions a plenty— is the kind that 
a man uses to get men to shouting so that he can slip into office. We as 
a nation are not very careful about having our money clean. Public 
sentiment upholds Rockefeller; it takes his dirty money and is glad to 
have it. Until people at the very bottom of their character revolt 
against taking Rockefeller's money as they would against taking Jesse 
Jame's, or Gambler Richard Canfield's, until the people get honest in 
the core of their hearts, talk of any sort of legislative reform is idle. For 
if it is not a trust, it will be some other selfish devise that will extort 
money from producers and consumers with the full and envious approv- 
al of the people. 

I don't believe all trusts are bad; I don't believe all rich men are 
dishonest. But I notice that the people envy the rich men who are 
dishonest just as much as they envy the rich man who is honest. I do 
not believe that all poor men are honest, yet I have noticed that honest 
poverty is respected no more than dishonest poverty by men who talk 
most glibly about the downtrodden and oppressed. Until public 
sentiment makes the proud thief a social outcast, as it does the convict 
thief, there is no sense in hoping to accomplish much reform against 
smart stealing by laws. Laws that do not reflect character are dead laws. 

In the mean time, whoever calls out against the false gods as you 
are calling, has done his full duty. The world has been moved along by 
those who are willing to die protesting and doing their share of the work 
in making men see the evil of their ways. 

I admire your spirit and your courage, and I wish you well. 

Sincerelv, 

W. A. WHITE. 

SOME EARLIER COMMENTS 

Prof. Richard Ely, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, writes: 

"I am greatly interested in what you say about the tariff." 

Ex-Governor Charles Robinson, of Kansas, writes: 

Lawrence, Kansas, October 14, 1889. 
"Col. Percy Daniels, Dear Sir: — I have read your "Crisis for the 
Husbandman" with great interest. It is certainly a hopeful sign of the 
times when men like yourself are awake to the situation, and can sound 
the alarm with such convincing facts and logic. The "Crisis" should 
be in the hand of every farmer in the country, as such literature is 
greatly needed to set him free. ' ' Sinrecely yours, 

C. ROBINSON. 



32 A CRISIS FOR THE HUSBANDMAN 

From Justice Wilbur of Rhode Island, who was mustered out of 
the 7th Reg. R. I. V., as captain, June 21st, 1865; was made a 
judge of the district court the next month and served nineteen 
years and seven months, then promoted to the supreme court and 
served twenty years and five months, making forty years of con- 
tinuous service on the bench. In his letter of approval he says 
under date of December 9, 1889- 

"The subject you treat of is a vast one, and of great interest to the 
farmer. Your reasoning is very clear and logical, and will therefore 
carry conviction. You are on the right road. Do not turn to the right 
hand or to the left but go steadily on." 

From Ex-Governor Wm.Sprague — War Governor of Rhode 
Island : 

Narragansett Pier, Sept., 1st, 1890. 
"Col. Percy Daniels:— I beg to thank you for the copies of the 
Western Herald that contain your July 4th, '90, oration. I had just 
finished reading the history of Kossuth, and the Hungarian revolt. 
Kossuth's speeches and your oration could easily be mistaken as from 
one and the same person. * * * Cordially, 

W. SPRAGUE. 

From the Rt. Rev. Thomas M. Clark, Episcopal Bishop of the 
Diocese of Rhode Island: 

Providence, R. I., November 29, 1890 
"Col. Percy Daniels: — Dear Sir. — I thank you for your very able 
pamphlet, which expresses to a great extent the views which I had 
already penned. Since you wrote, the country has expressed itself on 
the tariff question with an emphasis, and I do hope that those who are 
soon to come into power will have wisdom and principle enough to re- 
form the various abuses now existing. The good old Republican party 
seems to have entered upon the stage of decomposition. 

Very sincerely yours, THOMAS M. CLARK. 

From Judge Allen, of the Kansas bench: 

Pleasanton, Kansas, February 19, 1891. 
Col. Percy Daniels, Girard, Kansas. 

"Dear Sir: — I have noticed with pleasure, the position you take 
with reference to casting the burdens of National taxation on the rich 
and lifting it from the shoulders of the poor. I am firmly convinced, 
that sooner or later this must be the central idea of the new party. 

"The many growing evils of which we complain, will continue so 
long as a few men have the vast power now possessed by the great 
millionaires. The principal thing to do is to destroy their power for 
evil, by taxing away their possessions. Mere temporary expedients of 
defence against them avail nothing. Their power must be destroyed.,, 
Yours truly, S. H. ALLEN. 



CORRESPONDENCE 32 a 

The advocates of a progressive property tax as a corrective for 
wealth concentration, have heen hampered by the tendency to 
class it as an income tax. Less than a year ago a leading Kansas daily 
paper headed a two column quotation from my article of 1897 — "The 
Flood and Drouth Problem Solved by Graduated Taxation" — calling 
the project advocated, for raising the funds for controlling floods and 
improving and extending our navigable waterways, establishing forest 
parks and improving highways, an Income Tax. 

While I have opposed an income tax generally, as it is not a cor- 
rective measure, or too superficial to be classed as one, I have occasion- 
ally assented to it as better than nothing; but if people really want to 
correct the evils of wealth concentration they must consider. and enact 
something more far-reaching than an income tax. The following ex- 
tract illustrates the point: 

(Topeka Evening Press) 
Aug. 23, 1893 

GRADUATED PROPERTY TAX 

Gen. Percy Daniels hands the Press the following strictures upon 
our article of last Saturday commenting upon his tax scheme, and we 
hasten to acknowledge that in several very important instances we were 
in error as to the purport of the bill : 

Office of Lieutenant Governor, 
Topeka, Kan., Aug. 22, 1893. 
Editor Daily Press : 

Referring to your editorial comments on my property tax bill in 
last Saturday's issue of your paper, I beg to point out the following 
instances in which you were grievously in error: 

First — You head your comments on my bill "A Graduated Income 
Tax." My bill does not tax incomes at all. 

Second — In reference to the revision you talk of: In the original 
bill there was no definite provision for a return of the property of aliens. 
That was added to the new bill, but there was no other amendment 
except to increase the ratio of the proceeds, that should be devoted to 
public works — the employment of idle labor. 

Third — Is it constitutional? If you will refer to page 102 in my 
arguments on this tax problem ("A Crisis for the Husbandman") a 
copy of which you have, you will find some reply to this query. Pre- 
scedent, too, has established the right of the government to tax any- 
thing it chooses, and luxuries are especial objects of its solicitude. A 
million dollars may not be a luxury, but there is no doubt but what two 
millions are. 

Fourth — You say that the bill provides that the revenue of the 
government shall be taken entirely from the taxes on the millionaires; 



32 b MAN VS MAMMON 



while the facts are that the bill provides that the whole proceeds of 
the tax shall be applied to meeting the war liabilities i to setting our idle 
laborers at work and to paying the expenses of the state military, and 
that nothing from it shall be used for the normal expenses of the govern- 
ment. 

Fifth — You say that the bill would tax 5,000,000 people, implying 
that there are that many millionaires in the nation. If you will turn 
to page 97 of the "Crisis" lectures you will find a table showing that three 
years ago of the 310,000 people who own 90 per cent of the nation's 
wealth but 10,000 of them are millionaires, and on page 103 you can 
find a table showing that under this bill 8,000 of these millionaires 
would pay a tax of $1,780,000,000. Respectfully, 

Percy Daniels. 

As stated in our editorial under question we had not given the bill 
a thorough and critical examination, and we confess it was dense ig- 
norance on our part to have so far misconceived the scope of the bill as 
to have considered it to be an income tax. That a taxing measure 
should have been conceived that had for its object no relation to revenue 
whatever, but solely for the purpose of gradually confiscating for public 
use the inordinately large fortunes of the millionaires, was a proposition 
so unique and ingenious that the special attention of most anyone would 
necessarily have to be called thereto to avoid the error into which we 
had fallen. Gen. Daniels' bill has no relation to national or state 
revenues. It simply provides for the annual accumulation, through 
the taxing power of the government, of a large fund gathered by a grad- 
uated property tax on the possessions of millionaires, this fund to be 
divided each year among the states, one-third in proportion to their 
valuation, one-third in proportion to their population, and one-third in 
proportion to their area, the money thus falling to each state to be ex- 
pended in liquidating war obligations to the old soldiers and internal 
improvements. 

The mere suggestion contained in Gen. Daniel's letter above quoted 
will give the reader an idea of the measure he has promulgated, and 
which is now before congress. As to its constitutionality, practicability 
and expediency, we must leave that for future discussion. 



CORRESPONDENCE 32 c 



OFFICE OF 

The GIRARD FURNITURE COMPANY 



Girard, Kansas, June 13, 1907. 
Gen. Percy Daniels, 

Narragansett Farm. 
Dear Freind : 

In assorting my old papers this morning, I happened on to some- 
thing, that in the light of events that have come and gone with the 
years, since and before 1894, to my mind is both amusing and instructive. 
I refer to the "Allen Letter." over which most of the Republican daily 
papers had conniption fits. 

The full page HURRAH of a certain metropolitan daily, consisting 
of great scare head lines, with fac simile type-written letter of Judge 
Allen to you, your letter to me written on Santa Fe train May 21, 1894, all 
faithfully and accurately portrayed, is lying before me at this time; you 
could feel of my face after night and tell that I was smiling. 

There must have been quite a good deal of trouble, time, care, per- 
severance and expense put upon that page, which to my mind now, as 
well as then, was nothing more or less than a great big "mare's nest." 

When the reporter came to me, asking for an interview, and what 
I knew about it, I remember that I had very little to say, for to save my 
life I could not see wherein the case demanded it. Even then, I was not 
correctly quoted. I remember telling the reporter that it seemed to me 
they were taking it very tedious, and were making "much ado about 
nothing." That both you and Judge Allen were my personal and politi- 
cal friends; that Judge Allen had written a very sensible letter to a very 
sensible man — that he had submitted it to me (at that time Clerk of the 
District Court and a member of the Populist Committee) that the letter 
was a private one, that some thief had stolen it and had given it to the 
press, and that they had tried to make something out of it, had failed, 
and would fail. That there was nothing in it to show that you had 
thought of jumping Lewellings claim for Governor. Rather that you 
had put your quietus on any such arrangement made by your friends. 
That I despised the methods of Joe Bristow (who was the Republican 
state committee secretary) and his outfit and that they could not make 
those who knew you lose faith in you — and just a few more things. 

"The world do move." You are a bigger man today than Joe 
Bristow would have been had he landed for Senator. 

I notice by the papers of these later days, that you and the immac- 
ulate and irrepressible Theodore Roosevelt, President of these United 
States, are now trotting along nicely together in the same harness. 
That even he has learned what you knew then, and that the Graduated 
Tax and conservation of the elements is also a hobby of his — in short 
that you and your plans are good enough for him. The things which 
you contended for then are good sound doctrines now, by those who 
sought to belittle you. You have outstripped them all. You have 



32 d MAN VS MAMMON 

stood "by until the morning, and in the evening you have not withheld 
your hand." 

Bully for you ! The only pity is that we have not all your foresight 
and that you have not more of your best years in which to do battle 
for those who did not and do not appreciate you. 

Your friend, 

Wm. M. McDonald. 

Office of 

OVERMYEH <& OVERMYEH 

Topeka, Kansas, May 10, 1906. 
Hon. Percy Daniels, 

Girard, Kansas, 
Dear Mr. Daniels : 

Yours of the 5th inst is at hand. I also received your other letter 
to which you refer in this last letter, and was under the impression that 
I had answered it. But it seems that you did not get my answer and 
perhaps I did not write it though I am impressed with the idea that I did. 

I am glad to see that you feel that you can turn in and support us. 
I never blamed you for feeling as you have felt for many years, for I 
myself entertained similar sensations much of the time, but considered 
it best, upon the whole, to stay with the procession. 

I note the newspaper clippings you send me, and to me it is amusing 
to see how some people talk about the President's recent speech on the 
graduated tax question. Some body ought to send him some of your 
literature of several years back. The petition which a great number of 
us signed at that time would doubtless interest him. The President is 
only in the vestibule of the subject, and we ourselves, had not gone its 
full length, for we were seeking to give the idea a favorable introduction 
by the application of the avails of our scheme of taxation to particular 
and favored subjects. In my own mind I go further. I recognize the 
truth of Chief Justice Marshall's saying that "The power to tax is the 
power to destroy." If, therefore, there have grown up in this country 
great and sinister powers (and that fact is universally conceded) and the 
people wish to prevent these powers from destroying popular govern- 
ment, justice and righteousness; why not apply to them the power of 
taxation ? For by the proper application of it they could be absolutely 
destroyed, and by a very limited application of it they could be so 
curbed and restrained as to deprive them of their dangerous character. 
For, if the power to tax is the power to destroy, it is the power to curb 
and restrain. It is amazing to my mind that some of our so-called 
"statesmen" do not accentuate this proposition, seeing that they are 
so alarmed by the progress of socialism. 

This is the one great outlet and road to relief from plutocracy on 
the one hand and socialism on the other. That it must ultimately be 
adopted as the true course for the regulation and control of inordinate 
wealth seems to my mind clear. Very truly yours, 

David Overmyer 



EXTRACTS FROM 

A Crisis for the Husbandman 

Lectures to the Qirard Kansas Orange 1889 



CHAP. I. SEC. VIII. CORPORATE POWER LIMITED AND SUB 
JECT TO REVISION 

Many people look on a charter as a contract to which either 
party can legally hold the other. This is a mistake. They are 
simply privileges, usually given in this country without consid- 
eration, and accepted subject to the restrictions and limitations 
of the state constitution and laws. It is an axiom of ours that 
all power not specifically delegated to the government, is retained 
by the people. The constitution of Kansas says in Sec. 2, Bill 
of Rights: 

* * No special privileges or immunities shall ever be granted by 
the legislature, which may not be altered, revoked, or repealed by the 
same body; and this power shall be exercised by no other tribunal or 
agency. 

Also in Art. 12, Sec. 1.: 

The legislature shall pass no special acts conferring corporate 
powers. Corporations may be created under general laws, but all such 
laws may be amended or repealed. 

The present tendency of public purpose in reference to rail- 
roads, is to assist them to that commanding position of willing 
servitude that shall make them the most useful to the public, 
themselves included as an integral part of that public, but not 
superior to it, as the part can never be superior to the whole. 
The drift too of both legislation and decision is toward the same 



34 A CRISIS FOR THE HUSBANDMAN 

wise result. Gathering evidence from the extremes of the coun- 
try, we see within the past few months the legislature of Ver- 
mont passing a law to compel railroads to make connections at 
railroad crossings to the convenience of the traveling public; 
and from the Pacific coast we have the case of San Francisco vs 
the Spring Valley Water Co., in which the issue whether a state 
had the right to modify or alter the charter of incorporation, 
was brought before the United States supreme court. The court, 
Chief Justice Waite presiding, held that the corporation was, 
from the moment of its creation, subject to the legislative power 
of alteration, and, if deemed expedient, of absolute extinguish- 
ment as a corporate body. Under these facts, may we not 
reasonably expect that the railroads may be compelled to take 
up their share of supporting the national government, thereby 
relieving the farmer and other laborers of that portion of their 
unjust load? This would save the people of Kansas, who are 
one-fortieth of our total population, something like $2,000,000 a 
year, and greatly help the farmer to reduce his annual deficiency.* 
SEC. IX. A DERNIER RESORT. 
This we may expect to accomplish if we go to work in a me- 
thodical manner, and get some relief without an appeal to the 
dernier process, of proceeding against these corporations for 
overstepping their chartered privileges and authority in dis- 
criminations, habitual, persistant and sometimes malicious dis- 
criminations against small dealers and shippers, whereby thou- 
sands of them have been ruined or driven into other fields. The 
powers given to these corporations cannot be violated with im- 
punity, unless the state authorities are interested, directly or 
indirectly, in behalf of these violators of law. There are very 
few railroad corporations in this country but what have so per- 
sistently violated their legal powers— the ultra vires of law — 

*William Allen White's article of sixteen or eighteen years ago, 
"What's the Matter With Kansas," was followed by a brief article 
entitled "A Change of Heart in Kansas" in 1905, of which the following 
is the close. 

"The other day a pamphlet came to the Gazette office which seemed 
about the right thing. It was going after railroad discrimination. It 
seemed sane and calm and well poised. The man who wrote it seemed 
to have his head full of facts well grounded through the wheels of logic. 
When low! and behold the pamphlet was written and printed in 1889, 
and was written by Percy Daniels ! The sun do move. This is a funny 
world!" 



CORPORATION DELINQUENCIES AND A REMEDY 35 

that they have forfeited their right to their charters; and this 
forfeiture can be enforced when a formal demand is made, and 
the necessary proof furnished, of their willful overriding individual 
right and public interest in their discriminations in favor of their 
friends. Prof. Dwight, of Columbia College, says on these points: 

"Every franchise is accepted on the implied conditions that it 
shall be properly exercised. If there be abuse of corporate powers, a 
proceeding may be instituted in behalf of the state, to forfeit the charter. 
The most common mode of dissolving a corporation is by Judicial 
Decree." 

A letter touching this point from *Chief Justice Doster follows: 



JOHN MARTIN, Clerk FRANK DOSTER, Chief Justice 

G. C CLEMENS, Reporter WILLIAM A. JOHNSON, 

STEPHEN H. ALLEN, 

Associate Justices 

STATE OF KANSAS 

Supreme Court 



Marion, Kansas, July 25th, 1897. 
Hon. Percy Daniels, Girard, Kansas. 

Dear Sir: — Your letter of the 18th was found by me upon my 
return home. Holding the position I do it is a very delicate matter for 
me to express a legal opinion, even concerning a matter of general or 
public concern. What I might conceive the law to be were the case 
stated by you to be presented for decision, I cannot now say; but I 
have always assumed that all substantial violations of obligations due 
from corporations to the public, if persisted in, constituted grounds of 
forfeiture of their charters; and that discriminations between patrons 
of a railroad company constituted a violation of corporate duty. I 
should think that Prof. Dwight states the law with substantial correct- 
ness in the quotation you make from him on page sixteen of "A Crisis 
For The Husbandman." 

I have read the newspaper clipping concerning the enormous 
wealth of Rockefeller and its rapid increase. I had no idea of its 
magnitude or the amount of income derived from it. I have come to 
the conclusion that the saving grace in social life is the democratic 
sense of equality. Inequalites of moneyed fortune such as exist between 
Rockefeller and the common laborer are as abhorrent as inequalities 
in political station such as exist between a monarch and his vassal. 
The one form of inequality will be tolerated no more than the other. 
We shall experience trouble, however, in the equalizing process. 

Sincerely yours, 

FRANK DOSTER. 



36 A CRISIS FOR THE HUSBANDMAN 

CHAP. II. SEC. IV. 

Girard, Kansas, August 2, 1888. 
Hon. J. J. Ingalls, Washington, D. C. 

My Dear Sir: — I enclose a clipping from the Girard Press 
containing third paper of an "Open Letter" with two or three 
points marked. 

The condition of certain business combinations is such that 
the general public is rapidly coming up to the point of assert- 
ing that positive legislation must interfere. Assertions of these 
wrongs in resolution, nor idle and perfunctory discussion in 
legislative bodies, will long suffice to satisfy this growing con- 
viction. I have studied the matter considerably and give the 
result in my "open letter." Few dispute the ground I take 
that something in the shape of corrective measures must soon 
come. It is much more important that something be done, than 
what that something shall be. I have not only stated that cor- 
rective measures must be adopted, but have suggested a reme- 
dy — simple, speedy and certain. The procedure proposed, at 
first would seem arbitrary, but it would not be half as arbitrary 
as the methods employed to accumulate the volume of capital 
that makes the present wrongs and oppressions possible. Are 
either a Republican Senate or a Democratic House in a temper 
to assent to the position taken, that the time has come when 
every instinct of justice, patriotism and charity demand that 
some method be devised by which the power of the capitalist 
for oppression and wrong be curtailed? 

Yours Respectfully, 

PERCY DANIELS. 



SEC. V. SENATOR INGALLS' IDEA. 

VICE PRESIDENT'S CHAMBER. 

Washington, D. C, August 7, ii 
Hon. Percy Daniels, Girard, Kansas. 

Dear Sir: — I am in receipt of your letter of 2d inst., with 
enclosed copy of an open letter upon pending questions of in- 
terest to the American people. 

I belong to the school of politicians who think that govern- 
ment should interfere as little as possible in the affairs of its 



TAXATION TO CONTROL THE TRUSTS 37 

citizens. I have no sympathy with the paternal idea, but be- 
lieve that the best results are attained when the people are left 
to settle the great questions of society by individual effort. 
All that legislation can do is to give men an equal chance in 
the race of life. We cannot make poor men rich, or rich men 
poor, except by making the natural capacities of all men ex- 
actly alike. The difficulties in society arise from the fact that 
Providence has established unequal conditions, making some 
men wise and others foolish; some men provident and others 
thriftless ; some men industrious and energetic and others idle and 
self-indulgent. Every man ought to have the same chance. The 
poor ought to be protected from the aggressions of the rich, 
and the weak from the injustice of the strong. When we have 
done this, I suppose all has been accomplished that can be 
reached by statute. 

Wendell Phillips stated the case very sensibly when he said 
that the temperature of the country could not be increased "by 
boiling the thermometer." Very truly yours, 

JNO. J. INGALLS. 



SEC. VI. PER CONTRA. 

Girard, Kans., August 12, 1888. 
Hon. J. J. Ingalls, Vice President. 

K? My Dear Sir: — Yours of the 7th replying to my question 
on a financial matter is at hand. * * * * 
i >3 You say "All that legislation can do is to give men an equal 
chance in the race for life. We cannot make poor men rich, or 
rich men poor except by making the natural capacities of all 
men exactly alike. * * Every man ought to have the same 
chance." 

I cannot see that the distribution of wealth is very closely 
allied to our individual capacities. 

There are men here in Kansas that are barely making a living 
raising grain, who are as able and unscrupulous as any of the 
Wall Street financiers, or the men who divided a quarter of a 
billion in the various Pacific Railroad deals. Opportunity is 
the larger factor in most of these transactions — lack of integ- 
rity taking second place, and capacity third. You say. every 
man should have the same chance. Will the government ever 



38 A CRISIS FOR THE HUSBANDMAN 

give any one again the same opportunity it gave those men? It 
cannot give the same to all. 

Again : Your reasoning followed to a conclusion would make 
wealth dependent on capacity. Take the Senators and write 
down their names in the order of their Dollars. Would you 
concede that the man whose name headed the list, is the ablest 
Senator, and the second next to him? If so, Kansas would com- 
plain at being represented by one so near the foot of the list as 
our Acting Vice President. Nor will the rule work with our 
great men of the past. Lincoln, Webster and Grant are among 
the greatest names in our history. Lincoln said in 1859 if ne 
should get the Vice Presidency he hoped to save enough to 
make $20,000 and that was enough for any man. I think when 
he died five figures easily covered his pile. Webster could not 
take care of his own pocket-book; and Grant, who had so much 
given him, died well nigh penniless. 

It is not a creditable thing to our civilization that when a 
man like Cyrus W. Field gets stuck in the mud with a hun- 
dred thousand shares of the most valuable stock in the country, 
a man with a gun of larger caliber can jump out of the bush, 
and tell him he may pull out of the mud if he will drop 70,000 
of his stock. To be sure, in transactions between the brokers, 
it makes but little difference to the country who gets on top, 
but these deals are not confined to that class. In most of 
their transactions, instead of attacking a few men with a few 



The following from chapter V of Monopoly the Paramount 
Question of 1902 also shows a change of heart: 

SEC. IV. A NOTABLE CONVERT 

In a correspondence with Senator Ingalls fourteen years ago over 
this proposition which I discussed in my open letter to the Republican 
party, he attempted to ridicule the idea of taxation as a remedy. 

Soon after, from the failure of that party to keep^their promises of 
1888, Mr. Ingalls lost his position After improving thw-opportunity for 
study thus acquired, Mr. Ingalls changed his mind, and a few years 
later, in a newspaper article discussing the subject, he said : 

INGALLS ON TRUSTS 
Says They Can Be Destroyed by Taxation if the People Will. 

* * * * 

"The trusts must go. It is written. They will not depart volun- 
tarily. They will protest at every step. They will stand upon the 
order of their going. They will denounce all inquiry as uniquitous, 



THE CLASS THE NATION MUST LEAN ON 39 

million dollars apiece, they attack a few million people with 
a few dollars apiece. And here I believe it the duty of the 
government not only to break these blockades, but to put the 
Armament of the Belligerents on a peace footing. Government 
cannot give every man the same chance or opportunity, but it 
can correct some of the inequalities it has helped to make; and 
I believe no party will long retain control of the government 
that does not make the effort. Truly yours, 

PERCY DANIELS. 

CHAP. III. SEC.XXI . FARMERS' SAFETY IN UNITED ACTION 

Daniel Webster said, "The farmers are the founders of civil- 
ization." Now let the farmers but say with one voice that the 
barbarism of civilization shall not be the destroyer of its found- 
ers, and the hostile movement of plutocratic forces will be 
stopped, and the discriminnting acts of their subservient legis- 
lators will be recinded. 

As custodians of this heritage of our institutions, we have 
been neither wise nor careful. If we have failed in our duty, 
we cannot defeat the enforcement of a penalty. In all such 
things is a law of equivalents, and the penalty must be paid, or 
a day of retribution cometh. 

Now we come to see what account we can give of our stew- 
ardship, we can readily find how seriously we have been at 
fault. It will be more difficult to apply a remedy; but the 
remedy must include a process that will gradually restore the 
immense piles of plunder, to the mass of our people whose earn- 
ings they represent. When we stop the over production of 

inquisitorial and inspired by partisan malignity. But this will not 
deceive the people. They want the truth. The object of Lexow com- 
mittees is to disclose the existence and the methods of the conspirators 
to limit production, control prices, depress wages and strangle compe- 
tition. Public opinion will do the rest. 

"The problem is not insolvable; the power of the people to suppress 
injurious trusts and monopolies is ample already. The state can outlaw 
them as public enemies, and through the courts forfeit their powers, 
annul their franchises and declare them against public policy and void, 
in accordance with the precedents of many centuries. 

"But the nation can wield a mightier weapon still. When the 
supreme court declared in the sate bank cases that the power of congress 
to tax was the power to destroy, it delegated a formidable weapon to 
discontent, and placed in every bondsman's hands the means to cancel 
his captivity."— JOHN J. INGALLS. 



40 A CRISIS FOR THE HUSBANDMAN 

millionaires, we will also stop the over production of impover- 
ished farmers and idle laborers. 

Any theorists who promise such a policy as will result in the 
distribution of even justice to all our citizens, without including 
the immense fortunes of the country which have been piled up 
through bribery, extortion, confiscation and robbery, as the 
main source of the present critical condition of our industrial 
classes, are making promises they do not intend to keep, and 
the sooner these advisers, with their delusive theories, are rele- 
gated to the domain of the sophists, the sooner we will have 
the light to start intelligibly at the root of the trouble. We 
are standing on the threshold of a conflict, foretold but a short 
time before his services in his country's cause were ended, by 
the greatest mind in our history. The crisis on which we have 
entered is as serious and portentious, as threatening to our in- 
stitutions and as doubtful in its results, as the one he was a 
participant in, when, two years before the mighty echo of the 
first gun at Sumpter called a nation from apathy to action — 
speaking of the wealthy and aristocratic combinations of the 
slave power against him — he said, "Broken by it, I too, may be; 
bow to it, I never will. The probability that we may fail in 
the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause 
which we deem ot be justyind it shall not deter me. If ever I 
feel the soul within me, elate and expand to those dimensions 
not wholly unworthy of Its Almighty Architect, it is when I 
contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world 
beside, and I, standing up boldly and alone, and hurling defi- 
ance at her victorious oppressors. Here, without contemplat- 
ing consequences, before high Heaven and in face of the world, 
I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the 
land of my life, my liberty and my love." 

The eloquent words, the unselfish life, the noble example of 
the pioneer who was called from the Illinois prairies to pilot 
the nation through its years of tribulation, may well move us to 
heed his warning words of later years; and this clear statement 
of his early resolution and purpose, we may well consider to 
have been instigated by some influence beyond the range of hu- 
man perceptions. Destiny had already taken him by the hand 
to lead him along a path o^ such trials and responsibilities and 
honor — trials that were always bravely borne, responsibilities 



A PATRIOTIC EXAMPLE 41 

that were never aught but cheerfully carried, honors that were 
ever modestly worn; — as no American was before, or has been 
since, called to assume or accept; — never to release her hold, 
till in the shadows of the grave, she laid it on his breast with 
his life work finished, and drew the misty shroud of eternity 
over the remains of our Hero and Patriot and Guide — Abraham 
Lincoln. 

Will his great friendship for this country and this people, 
his efforts and labor and sacrifice that "a government of the peo- 
ple, by the people, and for the people might not perish from 
the earth;" and the known unselfishness of his advice, impel us 
to recognize his wisdom and honor his counsel? Then we will, 
without delay, set about the difficult task of solving the prob- 
lems, I have presented for your consideration. * * * 
CHAP. V. SEC. XIII. FUTILE EFFORTS AT RESTRICTIVE 

LEGISLATION. 

Legislation may be able to prevent the combination of cor- 
porations; it may recall all its grants of privilege and power; 
but it cannot prevent two or two hundred individuals working 
together through a common agent. When it shall succeed in 
preventing a man from buying his neighbor's onion crop, hold- 
ing them as long as he chooses, and selling to whom he pleases 
for what he can get, it will require the full moon to rise at mid- 
night, and seed-time and harvest to come together. 
SEC. XIV. A HYPOTHETICAL CASE. 

Suppose some genius should invent a process by which he 
could gather, condense, store, and pile up our atmosphere, and 
that the highest condition of earthly satisfaction and content 
would be reached when he had done this. When he had set 
his ponderous pumps going and stored a supply many times 
greater than any possible requirements of himself or his friends, 
and we felt the pressure running down, so it took an unusual 
effort to supply ourselves with a normal ration of oxygen, would 
we be justified in going singly to commend the genius of the 
inventor, to adore his machine and applaud its operations; or 
would we, though our forefathers had never found it necessary 
to legislate for such a contingency — without searching Caesar 
or Croesus for a precedent — without consulting the Zend Avesta, 
Roman law, or Greek mythology for authority, put a statutory 
limit on the suction orifice of the great machine? We would 
say the restrictions and limitations of the past do not meet 



42 A CRISIS FOR THE HUSBANDMAN 

the needs and conditions of our present civilization. We will 
make the environments of law conform to the necessities of the 
present — to the new environments of fact. We will maintain 
equal conditions of protection for our people, if we have to 
modify our machinery rather than abandon the former that we 
may retain the appliances that our forefathers found sufficient. 
That is the question, the great question, that we have to settle 
now. Are we cowardly enough to evade this responsibility and 
run from this duty? 

SEC XV. THE REMEDY. 

An agreement on the best course to pursue will not be a 
matter of easy adjustment. A little study may give any of us 
some plan, but we will not all concede that any one scheme 
is the best. Nor is it probable that, however much we may 
have studied the question, any one of us will be able to suggest 
the best solution. The more important thing to do first is to 
decide that we will all assist in any reasonable process, trusting 
that investigation and experiment will remove its inequalities 
and supply its deficiencies. * * * * 

SEC. XIX. REFORMS AND INDEPENDENCE 

The reforms here considered and advocated, are in their scope 
and ultimate purpose consistent with the fundamental princi- 
ples, the very corner stone of early Republicanism, but they are 
too radical in their details and results to be acceptable to pres- 
ent party management, and I have to step out into the broader 
arena that encompasses all parties,beyond the bounds of party 
discipline, where I will find growing legions of earnest workers 
in behalf of oppressed humanity, and a literature unculled by a 
party censor. If loyalty to the principles of yesterday is not 
loyalty to the party of today, it is the fault of those who have 
made the party of today hostile to the principles of yesterday. 

SEC. XX. A RIGHTEOUS PURPOSE ESSENTIAL TO CONTIN- 
UED PROSPERITY. 

Parties, like individuals, must know the world moves on, an 
irresistable force. It has never yet met an immovable body. 
All that man knows of earth or nature is transient. Nations, 
parties, individuals are but things of a day. What the pur- 
pose of our presence here is, we need not try to guess. It is 



NEW ISSUES CALL 43 

probably more closely allied, in our transient stay, to the wel- 
fare of the mass, rather than to the gratification of the individ- 
ual. Nations, communities, parties will prolong the energies 
and enthusiasm of youth so long as the good of the mass of 
their people is the inspiration that guides their counsels; but 
when they relax their efforts to grant the greatest good to the 
greatest number, they are passing the borders of their dotage. 
If they fill their systems with a toothsome poison, and turn 
away from the bitter antidote to revel in its sweets, the Mene, 
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, that startled the haughty Babylonian 
monarch in his revels, was no more certain of fulfillment than 
that a cleansing sore, or the corruption of death, would testify 
to their successors that the world moves on. * * * * 

SEC. XXIII. NEW ISSUES BEFORE US 
The world moves on. The questions of the war are settled, 
New issues are upon us. Parties cannot live on past achieve- 
ments. Living issues alone prevent disintegration. The ques- 
tions here discussed are the important ones for consideration and 
settlement now. The controlling faction in parties is more 
interested in party supremacy than in party principle. The people, 
as a whole, are more interested in principle than in party suprem- 
acy. A majority believe the highest service a party can render 
is to promote good government, to encourage honest industry, to 
distribute even justice; and these are allied with parties for the 
sole purpose of assisting in such results. Another class be- 
lieve the highest service a party can render is to promote exter- 
nal harmony in its ranks, to enforce a proper adoration of all 
new dogmas, and to distribute the offices. These are loyal par- 
tisans for the good they require the party to be to them; but 
true party loyalty consists, not so much in a blind adhesion to 
all the party's acts, as in a purpose to make one's vote assist 
in the adoption of principles that are the basis of its structure; 
and those who have the most interest in our instituitons will do 
this in spite of the growls of the party machine. * * * * 



HOW -? 

Now, realizing the necessity for radical corrective measures , 
we are confronted with the question of how they may be applied 
and enforced. 

In considering methods of bringing about the reforms ad- 
vocated in the preceeding pages, the great obstacle we find in the 
way is the tax provisions of the Federal Constitution. While this 
impediment was recognized in the Kansas Resolution of '97, it 
was not thought that when the necessity for and the justice of 
the measures came to be understood and appreciated, there 
would be any greater difficulty in getting the necessary change 
in the constitution, than in the passage of the necessary acts. 

There were then but few men outside the bar and not con- 
nected with the government officially, who realized that the 
Federal Constitution, has by court decisions and legal juggling, 
been carried out of the reach or nearly so, of the people. These 
changes — like the 5 to 4 income tax decision, have been mainly 
in the interest of predatory wealth. Now the cry of "Unconsti- 
tutionality" is used as a bogey to prevent voters from demanding 
what they know justice entitles them to. The greatest impedi- 
ment in the way of a restoration to the people of the blessings of 
Republican Institutions — of an equality of opportunity — is the 
difficulty in mending our organic law and in wiping out court 
made amendments and correcting the (let us charitably say) 
blunders of judicial decrepitude. 

The President — for one of his positive convictions and direct 
habits of expression — has been mild in his arraignment of the 
courts; more so than he would be likely to be as a private citizen. 
Justice Gaynor of New York has hit the bar harder in helping the 
people see their responsibility for court delinquencies. Congress 
is practically made up of attorneys; and under their control, 
legislation has been friendly to the interests of predatory wealth 
and the holders of swollen fortunes. A large percent of them are 
there for the purpose of protecting the corporations in then- 
lawless practices, and it is mainly thro' their control of govern- 
ment policies and their influence on courts that present unjust 
conditions have been forced on the American people. 
II CORPORATIONS ENTHRONED 

The day foreseen and foretold by our lamented Lincoln, 



A CROWNED USURPER 45 

when corporations would be enthroned, is here. THEY ARE 
ENTHRONED. They are the crowned usurper before whom 
legislatures and courts bow; the tyrant who gives statesmen their 
position; the despot who grants politicians their opportunities. 
The tax which this usurper imposes overshadows that of the 
federal government 60%. Corporations, through their com- 
binations, are taxing us $80 per family; they have the nation by 
the throat and their hands in our pockets. Fortified in then- 
position, as they are by the legislatures they buy, and defended 
as they are by the courts they have leased, the people are now 
without a chance to protest or power to prevent. 

They can reclaim the chance and regain the power if they 
so will it, but they are without them today. 

III. BUT ONE JUST AND PEACEABLE PROCESS AVAILABLE. 

Taxation is the only peaceable method by which the trusts 
and corporations will be called down and the concentrated loot 
of the multimillionaires replevined; and it would furnish the 
money at once to employ all idle labor on public works. It is 
the only thing plutocracy fears but the mob. Way back in the 
early days of corporate viciousness when people were confiding 
and simple, some milder and better process might have been 
possible, but even if so, none other is now within their reach. 

Let us cut the gordian knot of capital and restore to labor 
some of its lost earnings by the engine of taxation, and not 
bequeath to the next generation the shackles that are cursing this. 

IV WEALTH CONCENTRATION THE SOLE CAUSE FOR 
THREATENING CONDITIONS. 

The sole cause of discontent in America and the source of the 
inequality of opportunities, that the rank and file of all parties 
ask to have corrected, is wealth concentration. The purpose to 
correct this evil must be the first object of any reform party. 
It is the main purpose of all sincere reformers. In the two great 
old parties the majority of voters acquiesce in what they really 
dislike and condemn, because this class in each thinks the defeat 
of their party would be a worse evil than all the deception, wire 
pulling and chicanery practiced to prevent it; and so they take 
the dose prescribed without regret. 

An equal opportunity for all cannot be restored without not 



4 6 HOW? 

only stopping the rapid absorbing of the country's wealth by the 
few, but diffusing the inordinate part of it they now have which 
gives them the power for evil they so viciously and mercilessly 
use. 



V. THE PENDING STRUGGLE. 

We are face to face with a conflict between the capitalist and 
the laborer. Willing or unwilling, ready or not, the struggle is 
upon us. 

There are avenues, broad and accessible, sunny and Christian, 
open before us, and a large majority of our people ready to follow 
them, that lead straight to a certain and peaceful overthrow of 
plutocracy and the restoration of the masses to their privileges, 
rights and power. 

Another course leads down to revolution and the unknown 
sea beyond; and we are following the latter today, while holding 
in our hands the power to take the better way. But one thing 
we should remember as our days of probation go by : That there 
is a limit held before our faces in the warning pages of history, 
where the duty of loyal citizens to acquiesce in injustice and 
submit to oppression ceases; a point where the patriot sees a 
duty in resistance. Self-preservation, too, is the first law of 
nature; and under that law is a line of decisions with precedents 
reaching back to the dawn of history, that outrank any session 
laws and all the acts of congress of the nineteenth century. 

VI. THE WRITING ON THE WALL 

It is a condition that trifling changes in policy will not 
materially effect, that is the matter with the American republic. 
It is the practices and facts that have produced this condition 
that is the matter with the nation. It is the robbery of labor by 
"concentrated capital" that is the matter with the country. It 
is the knowledge that no existing political party is making a 
correction of these wrongs its chief purpose, added to the failure 
of the government to keep its pledge to give equal opportunity 
to all, which has produced the discontent that is so serious a 
menace to our institutions. And yet, those who are wronged by 
these startling facts and threatening conditions are more to blame 



THE BASIS OF OUR INSTITUTIONS 47 

for their existence than those who have so cunningly and skill- 
fully taken advantage of their foolishness and reaped where the 
masses have sown. 

VII. A BOUND SAMPSON. 

The industrial classes have had the power to prevent this 
great wrong. They possess the power to stop it. They should 
blame themselves more than those at whose feet they have cast 
their heritage. They have voted the tickets their trusted be- 
trayers have approved. They have brought the cords and held 
up their hands to be bound. They have brought the bandages 
and turned their backs to be blindfolded. But like the blind 
Sampson, they stand between the main pillars of the temple with 
the power to shake it down : And better than that, they can 
tear the seal from their eyes as Sampson could not, and either 
tumble their haughty oppressors in the gutter, or lead them back 
by the strong grip of the tribe of Judah — the invincible and 
omnipotent ballot — to descent method and honest effort. 

VIII. THESE THINGS MUST BE ACCOMPLISHED BY CON- 
STITUTIONAL CHANGES 

While many emminent men believe no change in the Federal 
Constitution is possible without revolution, justice cannot be 
assured to American labor until such amendments are made as 
will give Congress the right to make any discrimination in taxes, 
either direct or indirect, it chooses. 

Not only must the constitution be amended in that way, 
but the difficulty of mending it must be reduced to bring the 
government nearer the people. It is senility for people to sit 
down and allow their laws to be overthrown by some attorney's 
quibble. 

There is no more reason why an organic law should not be 
mended when found defective, than a statute law. And that 
organic law is defective that annuls a session law which has been 
passed with the approval of three-fourths of the people. If we 
want a Monarchy, let's have the kind in which the Commons rule 
and no Court or King can reverse them. But true Republicanism 
is better; and that is the kind of which Washington said: 

' The basis of our institutions is the right of the people to make and amend their 
constitutions of government." 



48 HOW? 

Justice Brown of the U. S. Supreme Court referred to our 
constitution and amendments to it, in an address to the Yale 
College graduates of 1895, as follows: 

'The problem whether the constitution of the United States embodied a feasible 
plan of government is already settled. Weak spots have undoubtedly been devel- 
oped — some changes seem almost imperative; but it still remains the most marvelous 
work of constructive genius that was ever created. It has grown with each decade 
in the affection of the people. The danger is not that it will be changed, but that it 
will be regarded as too sacred to be changed." And again he says: "In fact, 
patience under affliction is a leading defect in the American character. Instead of 
applying the rule "obsta principis" we are rather given to submitting with easy 
acquiesence to encroachments upon our natural rights, until further toleration be- 
comes impossible, when we reverse the old maxim, and declare that what cannot be 
endured must be cured." 

A vast majority of the people believe they have already 
acquiesced too long in court encroachments on both their natural 
and their constitutional rights. They believe further toleration 
is impossible and that the old maxim must be reversed, and the 
conditions which have become intolerable must be cured, what- 
ever congressmen may think, whatever courts may rule, whatever 
executives may propose — by changes in the United States Con- 
stitution in behalf of that element in national strength which 
Lincoln said was superior to Capital, and that is labor. 

IX. VESTED RIGHTS 

The trend of court rulings and decisions for at least a third 
of a century has been to affirm and extend the so-called vested 
rights of the capitalist. 

Tho' the courts have never seemed to discover it, there are 
other vested rights than those of property. Humanity has a 
vested right. It is the right to life — the right to an opportunity 
to maintain it; a right not only promised by the Declaration of 
'76, but guaranteed by the higher law. It is more of a duty of 
the individual and of the government to manitain it, than to 
maintain any vested right of property. 

Thos. Jefferson, in writing from France in 1786, said: 

' Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all 
from taxation below a certain point and to tax the higher portions of property in 
geometrical progression as they rise. Wherever there are in any country unculti- 
vated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been 
so far extended as to violate natural rights. The earth is given as a common stock 
for man to labor and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry, we allow it to be 
appropriated we must take care that other employment be furnished to those ex- 
cluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labor the 
eaxtk returns to the unemployed." 



STATESMEN AT SEA 49 

Thos. Jefferson did not believe government had a right to 
permit its citizens to be denied this fundamental right of an op- 
portunity to earn a living. When other sources fail government 
must furnish work. The time is fast coming when, if we continue 
in our present course and keep our eyes shut to the responsibility 
of government in this matter, labor will assert its vested rights 
in a demand for bread or a chance to work ; and if denied both will 
assert its Constitutional Rights and enforce its demand with 
its muscle. 

X. SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST LAW. 

Senator Sherman, in his speech in defence of his anti-trnst 
bill of eighteen years ago said : 

"Sir, now the people of the United States are feeling the power and grasp of 
these combinations, and are demanding of every legislature and of Congress a remedy 
for this evil, only grown into huge proportions in recent times. They had monopo- 
lies and mortmains of old, but never before such giants as in our day. You must 
heed their appeals, or be ready for the socialist, the communist, and the nihilist. 
Society is now disturbed by forces never felt before." 

"And sir, while I have no doubt but that every word of this bill is within 
the power granted to Congress, I feel that its defects are in its moderation, and 
that its best effect will be a warning that all trade and commerce, all agreements 
and arrangements, all struggles for money or property, must be governed by th t 
universal law that the public good must be the test of all." 

Now Predatory Wealth, finding this measure, whose autho: 
thought its chief defects were in its moderation, is curbing the 
opportunity of combined capital to plunder — -that the law is 
beginning to do what it was designed to do — appeals to courts 
and congress for aid. They ask to have it amended so instead 
of preventing combinations it may promote and protect them. 

If newspaper reports are true many of those who exert the 
greater influence in controlling government policy are in favor of 
granting the request. If such amendments are made we will 
have an anti-trust law for protecting the trusts, and the people 
can continue to "Point with pride" to laws that have failed 
because of the servitude of government to the possessors of 
Predatory Wealth, until they decide to depose the usurpers and 
elect a government which will recognize and uphold the Vested 
Rights, not only of the dollar but of humanity. This is 

XI. THE GREATEST QUESTION BEFORE US. 

The To^eka Capital of April 12th, 1900, says: 

'T>e paramount political issue in this republic is the control of the%reat trusts 
by national and state legislation. This issue, that reaches every man, from the da_y 
laborer to the millionaire, is greater than all other great issues combined. 



50 HOW? 

'Over 500 American trusts, organized to extort great profits on combined capital 
by destroying competition and raising the prices of food, wearing apparel, household 
goods, building materials, machinery of every kind, reaching all useful and orna- 
mental articles of the household, the office and factory, have placed a burden of 25% 
added cost upon the expenses of the people of the country. The whole system is 
built deliberately to rob the people and enrich those who form these criminal 
trusts. 

Never in the history of this nation has such gigantic and menacing power come 
into existence under the protection of law, as the trusts constitute today. 

The whole question needs no argument. The billions of watered stock issued 
for use as gambling paper upon which the people must pay interest; the constant 
increase in the cost of living the utter helplessness of congress to cope with the great 
issue; the contempt of trusts for oppostition, all point to the importance of the 
Republican party in every county and in every state, placing the party squarely in 
plain and unmistakable language against the encroachments of the trusts and in 
favor of legislation controlling them. 

' The defenders of the trusts ridicule the idea of putting the Republican party 
on record against them. They argue that competition will regulate prices, but forget 
that the trusts destroy competition. The farmer who pays $25 advance over one 
year ago on a reaper and $10 more for a wagon, and in proportion on other agricul- 
tural machinery, nails, barbed wire and all building materials because of the trusts 
controlling these prices will not vote with the party that protects or defends such 
robbery." 

XII. MOLOCH AND THE COURTS 

These vast combinations, in seeking for aid, plead with 
Moloch and the courts to shield them from Progressive Taxation 
this scourge of justice, this pestilence of righteous purpose. 

And what say many of the courts sitting at the feet of 
Moloch? 

"MOST GRACIOUS DESPOT; THY WILL BE DONE." 
Ex- Justice S. H. Allen, of our state supreme court, in writing 
of a comment of mine on the supreme court's reference to pro- 
gressive taxation in its war tax decision, says: 

" It is useless to try to make ourselves believe that the courts merely declare and 
apply the laws which congress and the legislatures enact. They veto what they do 
not like, and little by little, build up what they think is needed." 

The U. S. Spureme Court once threw out a hint showing how 
much of a menace they consider this process to be to predatory 
wealth and the holders of swollen fortunes. In an opinion on 
the war revenue law it assured the great trust magnates of its 
loyalty to their interests as against such a project; and that it 
may be able to defend them not only to the extent of the law, but 
outside of its provisions. This assurance is most significant. 
The opinion, rendered by Justice White, in discussing the pro- 
gressive feature of 'taxation, said: 



AN IOWA CASE 51 



'A number of economic writers contend that a progressive tax is more just and 
equal than a proportionate one. In the absence of constitutional limitations, the 
question whether it is or is not is legislative and not judicial. The grave consequences 
which it is asserted must arise in the future, if the right to levy a progressive tax be 
recognized, involves in its ultimate aspect the mere assertion that free and repre- 
sentative government is a failure, and that the grossest abuses of power are fore- 
shadowed unless the courts usurp a purely legislative function. If a case should 
ever arise where arbitrary and confiscatory action is imposed bearing the guise of a 
progressive or any other form of tax, it will be time enough to consider whether the 
judicial power can afford a remedy by applying inherent and fundamental principles 
f >r the protection of the individual, even though there be no express authority in the 
constitution to do so." 

The above quotation injects a simple query into the opinion. 
It does not directly say the court will protect plutocracy from 
such taxes. And yet it conveys the information that it may find 
an excuse for annulling such a law, passed "in the absence of 
constitutional limitations," by congress in the exercise of rightful 
legislative functions, on the ground of violating fundamental 
principles. 

S< risible people who are not cowed by the arrogance of the 
oligarchy's tools or the assumption of subservient courts, in such 
an event would ask where these nine men got the authority to 
define the inherent rights of 85,000,000 people. 

XIII. TWO NOTABLE CASES. 

The readiness with which courts annul laws in Ixhalf of 
wealthy cli nts makes it necessary that there should be an appeal 
to the people, where the constitution has been the cause of the 
eleieat of the law. 

There was a case in Iowa four years ago when action was 
brought against two railway companies on a charge of conspiracy 
to fix the amount of demurrage charges. Judge Piatt of the 
District Court promptly declared the Iowa trust law — which the 
action of the corporations violated — unconstitutional because 
the penalty was too big for the crime, and because the penalty 
was lager on a great corporation than on a small one. 

The purpose of the people and their legislature was to stop 
railroad combinations. They passed a law and fixed penalties 
for violations which they thought would stop them. The roads 
knew of the law and the penalty when they made their agreements. 
They expected the court would protect them and they were not 
disappointed. 

Judge Piatt, in defending the combination also notified the 
people and legislature of Iowa that in fixing penalties for crimes 



52 now? 

they should first see that they harmonized with his ideas and his 
environment. 

There was another case reported in the press dispatches from 
Iowa on the same date — February 12th, 1904. Dick Palmer stole 
a ham. There was no high salaried attorney to enter a demurrer. 
Palmer plead guilty and was sentenced to ten years at hard labor 
in the' state prison. 

An attorney general of Rhode Island a little more than 
twenty-five years ago, said: 

'Laws are made and executed to restrain and control poor men." 

I thought of the n mark when I read in the Topeka Capital 
of Febriiary 13th, 1904, the two dispatches — one from Waterloo 
and the other from D t s Moines — about these two cases. 

XIV. A KANSAS CASE. 

Kansas decisions are not free from evidence that the corpo- 
ration/ robber with its high priced attorneys stands a better 
chance of defeating justice than the small thief. 

Four years ago Kansas people realized they were payi: g 
more for their coal oil since it became a home product, than when 
it had to be shipped in. They found they were paying at least 
$2,000,000 a year more than if the price was established by com- 
petition intsead of a monopoly. So they decided to have a 
state refinery to compete with the Octopus. The legislature, 
when they met in 1905 did not look favorably on the project 
until they heard from the people and practically got instructions. 
Then they passed a bill for a branch penitentiary and a state 
refinery to be operated by convicts, as the state twine plant is 
operated. 

The Kansas Constitution — fortunately as many thought — 
has a clause providing for public improvements which might 
reasonably cover such a project. Section No. 5 or Article XI 
says : 

"For the purpose of defraying extraordinary expenses and 
making public improvements, the State may contract public 
debts; but such debts shall never in the aggregate exceed $1- 
000,000 except as hereinafter provided." 

** The bill carried an appropriation of $410,000 for building 
and operating a State Refinery. Surely any manufactory that 
would save the people $2,000,000 a year could not be less than 



A KANSAS CASE 53 



a great public improvement and, this would have been had the 
Lawyers permitted the law to stand. 

The attorneys and lobbyists of the Oil Trust did not seem 
much concerned whin the Act passed. Tiny thought they saw 
-a way to defeat the popular will, 

Ai oiher clause in the same Article of the Constitution — 
Section No. 8 — says: "The State shall never be a party in carry- 
ing on any works of internal improvements." So the only thing 
i pessary for the attorneys of the trust to do was to show the 
court that the state refinery was not a Public Improvement which 
the constitution provided for, but an Internal Improvement 
which it forbids the state being a party to. And the court prompt- 
ly saw it that way 

When the Kansas Constitution was made, exploiters and pro- 
moters were working on a variety of projects for internal improve- 
ments such as railroads, canals, river navigation and pikes. In 
Some localities the air was filled with wild cat schemes for getting 
state aid in support of such projects. 

The convention — after providing for public aid in behalf of 
necessary public improvements, evidently feared this wise pro- 
vision might possibly be construed as opening a way for state aid 
in support of transportation projects such as were then bring 
discussed. And so they put in the closing clause of Article XI 
that the state should never be a party to carrying on any works 
of Internal Improvements. Surely the convention was not foolish 
enough, after making provision for public improvements, to add 
a clause prohibiting them. A railway, canal, improving navi- 
gable rivers or piking roads would be internal improvements 
without any strained construction. A State oil refinery, or a 
State salt plant for the purpose of breaking the bonds of monopoly 
and saving the citizens of the state millions of dollars a year 
would be a great public improvement whether it was run by 
convicts or free labor. 

Two years after this case was decided in favor of monopoly a 
couple of men were tried in Salt Lake City for stealing $75. 
They were convicted and sentenced to fifteen years each in state's 
prison at hard labor. These cases show how the law and the 
gospel, the ten commandments and modern articles of faith arr 
not vindicated in the dealings of courts with the two classes cf 
cases. 



54 HOW? 

Of this Kansas case, the court in its syiibus, says: 

* ******** 

2. "State Oil Refinery. — Work of Internal Improvement." 
The construction, operation, and maintenance of an oil refinery 

* * * constitute a 'work of internal improvement.' 

3. Act of igc-5 Void. — Senate bill No. 30 is an act appro- 
priating money for 'work of internal improvement.' It con- 
travenes Section 8 of Article XI cf the Constitution, and hence 
is void/' 

Section 8 of Article XI referred to, was evid. ntly an after- 
thought and was inserted to prevent the state b. i; g plundered 
by corporations interested in transportation schemes. 

The Kansas Court in its finding shows the importance of 
knowing the purpose of the convention in its adoption of that 
clause, and quotes the following from the 23rd Mich. "Con- 
stitutions are to be construed as the people construed them in 
their adoption, if possible." It also quotes at length from the 
1 20th Mich., from 2 Cycl, Pol. Science and from Cool., Hist. 
Mich, to show the disastrous consequences of being a party to 
works of internal improvements. But what were those internal 
improvements? They were "roads, canals and navigable waters." 
No public improvement like an oil plant had lost its bearings and 
suddenly burst on their vision. They were the Internal Improve- 
ments for facilitatirg transportation. Section No. 5 of this same 
Artie' e XI which provides for public improvements, was apparent- 
lv wholly ignored by the court in its opinion which arnuled the 
law and defeated the popular will. 

Whether the Governor was in sympathy at that time with 
popular setiment or not, knowing the well nigh universal wish to 
see the plundering operations of the Standard Oil Company at 
least reduced by the operations of a state refinery, it was his duty 
to convene the legislature in special session that 
the unwilling law makers might again have been driven by their 
disappointed constituents to start the necessary process for ac- 
complishing their purpose. 

If a branch penitentiary is an internal improvement, a main 
penitentiary is an internal improvement. 

If a branch prison with an oil refinery attachment is an in- 
ternal improvement, a main prison with a binding twine and a 



ITS AUTHORS WOULD NOT RECOGNIZE IT 55 

coal mine attachment is an internal improvement, and according 
to the ruling of the court, unconstitutional. 

Whether these two measures were combined in one bill as a 
legislative trick in the hope of defeating state competition with 
the octopus, I know not; but it was a mistake on the part of the 
people and the Governor to permit it. It was & subterfuge, a 
trick of politicians and not a project of statesmenship; and if we 
had had a Hughes or a Folk for Governor the people would prob- 
ably have been given a chance to reverse the court and have tbe 
Public Improvement of an oil refinery for which the constitution 
seems to provide in Sec- 5 of Article XI, or to amend it so it will. 

COURT AMENDMENTS 

These decisions illustrate the terse statement of Justice S. H. 
Allen, of Topeka, that 

'It is useless to try to make ourselves believe that the courts merely declare 
and apply the laws which congress and the legislatures enact. They veto what they 
do not like; and little by little, build up what th e y think is needed." 

In this way and in others more direct, with the hlep of the 
great corporation lawyers, the courts have amended the consti- 
tution to suit themselves and their patrician friends; until, as 
said by President E. J. James of the University of Iillnois, in his 
address at the Jamestown Exhibition last September: 

"The fact is our constitution has been so changed by construction and inter- 
pretation that its authors would never recognize it. 

'It is highly demoralizing for an individual, a state or a nation to pretend to 
live up to a principle and make no attempt to do so; to pretend to observe a law and 
yet habitually violate it; to pretend to keep wthin the limits of a written constitution 
and yet constantly overstep them. 

'It is equally, if not more, demoralizing to go our own way, do what we please 
without regard to anything but our own views of expediency and then maintain that 
all these things are in harmony with our professed principles, our accepted laws, and 
our written constitution, when in order to justify this view, it be necessary to in- 
terpret these principles, laws or constitution in such a way as to violate all rules of 
logic and accepted canons of interpretations." 

The courts from the position of quiet interpreters of the law 
have gradually raised themselves to the position of dictators, 
building up what they think is needed in behalf of vested rights 
of dollars and for the benefit of the patricians. Of the lawyers, 
power and the peoples' apparent helplessness or ominous apathy 
the Emporia Gazette said in August 1906: 

TOO LATE 

The depositors of the Stenslahd Bank are going to hold a mass meeting to pro- 
test against the lawyers taking all' the assets of the wrecked bank. A lot of good 
that will do; the depositors have started three or four thousand years too late. The 
lawyers have got this country and every other country tied up, and the people can't 



56 HOW? 

do any thing. If every legislature in the United States, and the congress of the 
United States would proceed in form and order to pass a law preventing the admission 
of any more lawyers to practice in this country for twenty years, the courts which 
are run by the lawyers would immediately declare the laws unconstitutional, and 
go right on. If all the Governors and all the executive officers of the federal govern- 
ment would try to enforce laws against lawyers, the courts would impeach the ex- 
ecutives. 

The lawyers run this country and about the best a private citizen can hope for 
is to have a breather's license and a lot in the cemetery." 

While Mr. White in the above may exagerate the seriousness, 
of the situation — the arbitrary and lawless doings of courts and 
congress — yet there is too strong a current of truth filling in between 
the lines to permit the wrongs which he and hundreds of others 
describe and denounce, to allow their warnings to be safely ignored. 

Few if any men have had a larger experience in the past ten years 
in directing legislation and influencing courts in behalf of the interests 
he serves so well, than the railroad magnate, E. H. Harriman. He is 
reported too, to have been generous in his donations to certain campaign 
funds; but in 1906 seems to have had a falling out with the powers at 
Washington, and when invited to continue his donations, he emphat- 
ically refused. Mr. Harriman's interview on the subject was with. 
Congressman Sherman of N. Y. As a close friend of the President, Mr, 
Sherman reported the interview to his chief. In replying to this by letter 
Mr. Roosevelt summed up Harriman's theories and ideas of constitu- 
tional government as given in his interview with Sherman; (and he 
speaks with a candor and possitiveness that evidently comes from ex- 
perience) as follows: (as quoted in the N. Y. World.) 

"You inform me that he told you that he did not care in the least 
because those people (Hearst's) were crooks and that he could buy ihem 
that whenever he wanted legislation he could buy it; that he could buy 
Congress, and that if necessary, he could buy the judiciary." 

The greater efforts of the bar the courts and congress since the 
civil war have been directed to building up the system and defending 
the interests which feast and fatten through their skillful and cunning 
plundering of the laboring masses. As unscrupulous as they have been 
in working their schemes, it is not strange they are equally unscrup- 
ulous in defending their plunder. So when laws or the constitution 
have stood in their way, they have usually found means to annul the 
one and amend the other. This they have been able to do because of 
the connection with the great corporations of many of the ablest law- 
yers of the country; of the friends their influence puts on the bench, 
and of the preponderance of lawyers in congress, so many of whom 
have been identified, either directly or indirectly, in the consumation of 
the schemes of the holders of Predatory Wealth. 



LAWYERS IN CONGRESS. 57 

CONGRESS TO BLAME 

Congress, designed to represent the people and to defend their 
interests, is controlled by attorneys, who comprise two-thirds of its 
membership. Many of them became eminent because of their success 
in defending great criminals and combinations of law-breakers. That 
is a part of their business; but it is no reason why we should send them 
to congress to represent those whom their clients are plundering. Nor 
is there any reason why two-thirds of congress should be taken from a 
profession embracing not one-half of one per cent (or 114,703) of our 
"occupied" classes, while the agricultural class, numbering 10,438,219 
out of a total of all occupied classes of 29,285,922, or more than one- 
third, fill but four per cent of the seats. But there is good reason why 
on account of their services to the trust promoters and the railroad and 
oil kings, their number in congress should be limited and men from other 
occupations substituted: Nor would such a project be without em- 
inent historical endorsement. 

Even before the constitution was drawn up, Thos. Jefferson spoke 
of the folly of filling congress with lawyers, as follows: (from his au- 
tobiography) 

' I never heard either of them (referring to Gen. Washington and Dr. Franklin) 
speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point which was to decide the 
question. They laid their shoulders to the main points knowing the little ones 
would follow of themselves. 

'For the present, congress errs in too much talking. How can it be otherwise 
in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers whose trade is to question every- 
thing, yield nothing and talk by the hour. That 150 lawyers should do business 
together ought not to be expected." 

They still yield to the same proclivity. 

Of the difference between the country people and those of the 
"commercial cities" he says, Feb. 5th, 1803: "They are as different in 
sentiment and character as any two distinct nations; and (the cities) 
are clamorous against the order of things established by the agricul- 
tural interests." 

So the influence of attorneys in congress is no new defect, being as 
old as the constitution. And our efforts at correction should include 
this with other defects. The following table shows the vocation, when 
elected, of members of two congresses: 

SENATE HOUSE 

VOCATION 53rd 60th 53rd 60th 

Lawyers 58 54 229 238 

Public Officials* 2 14 10 44 

Bankers and Capitalists 4 5 8 22 

'Many of these were attorneys when they first entered congress. 



58 HOW? 



Farmers 3 3 39 15 

Editors, Publishers and Writers 3 2 12 13 

Merchants and Manufacturers. 5 4 25 10 

Miscellaneous. . . .' 13 10 23 48 

*Many of these were attorneys when they first entered congress. 

The occupied classes in the nation are reported in the 12th census 
as follows: 

Professional service* 1 264 737 

Trade and transportation 4 778 233 

Domestic and personal service 5 691 746 

Manufacturing and mechanical pursuits 7 112 987 

Agricultural pursuits 10 438 219 



Total 29 285 922 

*This includes the 114,703 lawyers. 

Twenty years ago Senator Plumb of Kansas said it was time the 
people had their inning but they are still waiting for it. When they get 
it that class of our population on which the nation has had to depend in 
times of great peril and trials will have a representation in congress 
more commensurate with their numbers, patriotism and good sense than 
today. In such times as the present the settlement of grave questions 
of public policy has with us usually fallen to the lot of country people. 

TO RESTRAIN AND DIFFUSE PREDATORY WEALTH- 

To curb the avarice and control the ambition of those who have 
corruptly gotten possession of the nation's wealth and people's govern- 
ment, and to limit the concentration of capital to reasonable bounds, as 
these are the main sources of present evils, are the great problems we 
have to solve now; and they necessarily involve radical changes in our 
fundamental law. Some of these changes the people have been clam- 
oring for for years. Others, the necessity for has not become so ap- 
parent until recently. In the early days of the nation they were unseen 
problems. 

A hundred years ago our contsitution stood without a parallel in 
the chroncles of human endeavor. Today — to say nothing of the 
changes made in it in behalfof an oligarchy — we find that the conditions 
and restrictions which were ample then, have become useless and futile 
in the multiplied facilities and grasping ambitions that are the com- 
panions of our present civilization. 

The corporations are enthroned, and their promoters, and those 
who direct their operations and who believe themselves to be the agents 
and custodians of modern progress, have thro' the power of their stolen 

'This includes the 114,7 03 lawyers. 



WANTED, A REPUBLIC . 59 

billions, forced such changes in it, both by interpretation and elimina- 
tion, that it now stands among civilized nations as the greatest defender 
of these audacious forces in the chronicles of modern grafters. If such 
a situation satisfies a majority of our people well and good. But if we 
have not got a government that suits us, if we have not got a govern- 
ment whose administration brings the greatest good to the greater 
number, let us organize one that will. And if we have not got a consti- 
tution which in its operation satisfies our ideas of right and wrong, let 
us be men enough — no matter what powers or ambitions, no matter 
whose avarice or vanity may stand in the way — to make one that will. 

WHAT IS A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 

The first thing to do is to make such changes in our constitution as 
will establish a Republican form of government. Many people think 
we are living under one now. They are mistaken, deluded. While 
we are now farther from it than ever before, the original Federal 
Constitution did not establish a Republic. Had it done so there is 
little doubt but that we would still be enjoying its blessings. The people 
would have had and retained the power to enforce their will. 

Many will be surprised at the denial that we are citizens of a Re- 
public. But what is a Republic? 

Webster says. "A Republic is a state in which the sovereign power 
is exercised by representatives elected by the people.' 

Our Government consists of three parts or branches — the legislative, 
the executive and the judicial. Are these chosen by the people? Not 
one of them! One house of Congress is chosen by the people, but the 
other house, not elected by the people, and the President, not elected by 
the people, and the Supreme Court, not elected by the people, can either 
■of them block the efforts and measures and overturn the work of the 
only part of the National Government chosen as are the officials of a 
Republic. 

So instead of being governed by representatives elected by the 
people, we are governed by officials not elected by the people, and there- 
fore are not citizens of a Republic. 

Great Britian is more of a Republic than this country, as it is 
governed by the House of Commons which is chosen by the people; and 
neither the House of Lords nor the King attempts to thwart or over-ride 
the will of the people speaking thro' their chosen representatives in the 
House of Commons. 

The last attempt of this kind was in the reign of King William IV, 
when Earl Gray was prime minister, in 1832. The House had passed 



60 HOW? 

a reform measure and a majority of the Lords were known to be op- 
posed to it. The prime minister got authority from the King to ap- 
point enough new lords to overcome the majority against the measure. 
Rather than permit a resort to that extreme method the lords yielded 
and passed the reform bill. Should the upper house there attempt to 
block important popular reforms as ours has repeatedly done, the next 
reform to be considered by the voters of Great Britian would be that 
of the abolition of the House of Lords, a proposition which has already 
become a subject of discussion. 

SHALL THE SENATE BE RECONSTRUCTED OR ABOLISHED. 

» 

Our upper house has frequently blocked the will of the people 
speaking thro' their representatives in the lower house. They have 
defied those they pretend to represent for the purpose of holding a 
position where they can defend the interests which a majority of them 
do represent. As a body they have shown an incapacity to appreciate 
the responsibilities of their position, their duty to their constituents, 
instead of to the interests whose pernicious influence and corrupting 
power did put them into the Senate. 

For this reason and also to bring about the changes necessary to 
give us a republican government, the Senate should be elected by the 
people unless, after further consideration we should decide to abolish it. 

But there are other reasons why it is not a representative body. In 
1900 New York had 7,268,894 people and two Senators; and Nevada 
had 42,335 people and two Senators Pennsylvania had 6,302,115 
people and two Senators; and Wyoming had 92,531 people and two 
Senators. Ten states with more than half the people had twenty 
Senators, and ten other states with less people than the state of Missouri 
had twenty Senators. A senator in the first group represents about 
1,930,000 people; and in the second group 146,000. 

The state of Rhode Island has the same pernicious system. The 
city of Providence with nearly one half the population of the state has 
one Senator. The city of Pawtucket with 43,000 people and adjoining 
Providence has one Senator, the combined population of the two ex- 
ceeding one half that of the state which in 1905 was 480,000. Thirty- 
six other cities and towns having less than one half the state's poplation, 
have thirty-six Senators!! That is one of the factors that have held the 
state in the boss ridden list and kept Gen. Brayton at the head of the 
machine for twentyfive years. 

Before we can have a Republican Government the Senators must 
not only be elected by the people but they must REPRESENT people. 



CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES NEEDED. 61 



Article V of the Constitution says: "No state, without its consent, 
shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." In a proposition 
for mending the constitution so as to get a Republican Government, it 
is a question whether an amendment supported by three-fourths of the 
states, can annul this clause. But whether they can or not, it has got to 
be annulled before we have a Republican Government. 

If the lawyers decide that the same proportion of states as can 
amend the Constitution, cannot abolish this clause, they can amend 
the Constitution and abolish the Senate; and then either provide that 
the present special duties of the Senate may be performed by the House 
Committees or a National Council established instead. 

The condtions in this country have become such that a Republican 
Government is impossible without great changes in our fundamental 
law and especially such'as will make the whole of the government consist 
of representatives chosen by the people. A hundred years ago the 
country had practically a Republican Government as we might today 
under the same conditions. There are two reasons for this : First, the 
desire and intent of the officers chosen was to serve the people and 
their country. They expected to fulfill their trust and to execute the 
popular will. Second, the people of that time would not tolerate in 
their officials what the people of today tolerate. The officials of ioo 
years ago did notjeach their high positions thru the efforts of men who 
had great schemes of graft they needed'official aid to carry out. 

The purpose of the great men of that time in ruling the country was 
to faithfully execute their trust^and comply rigidly with the terms of 
their oaths. That is why our forefathers enjoyed the blessings of 
Republicanism under a constitution that had so little of its fundamental 
theory in its articles. So let us resolve — without waiting for a party 
machine to recognize the popular demand for such constitutional 
changes as will restore to the people the blessings of a Republican gov- 
ernment which our predecessors enjoyed — to use our individual in- 
fluence in behalf of them. 

So, also, let us bear in mind three things: First, that our consti- 
tution does not comply with present needs and existing conditions. 
Second, that Washington said, "The basis of our political system is the 
right of the people (not the courts) to make and alter ther constitutions 
of government." Third, that the people must release the courts from 
their self-imposed duty and use the right, asserted by Washington, to 
so alter the constitution that an Equality of Opportunity may be re- 
stored to all law abiding citizens, that monopoly will be crushed, and 
Predatory Wealth may be diffused. Then will the people enjoy the 
blessings which the Socialists vainly promise. 



62 HOW? 

As To Socialism. 

The common ownership of the means of production and distribution 
of the necessaries of life is an impossibility. The organization of human- 
ity and the ordinances of nature forbid it. Our inherent attributes of 
selfishness, jealousy and greed (controlled in part thru the operation of 
conscience in one class, and given free rein from the absence of Moral 
Sense, in another) render it wholly impracticable. We are not on the 
border of the millenium. It is as far below the horizon as in the dark 
ages of a thousand years ago. But we are at the threshold of great 
changes that will open to us the door to greater peace and a new posper- 
ity thru a radical system of economic reforms, or to a season of tumult 
and calamity, as we may choose. 

Monopolly is the Handmaid of Socialism. Competition promotes 
vigor. Emulation stimulates effort. Monopoly blunts the one and 
hampers the other. Individual protest against monopoly is futile. Its 
agents smile in derision. Only vigorous laws will crush it; and laws 
must represent public sentiment to do so. They must express a pubilc 
purpose to command respect and obedience. Constitutions must be the 
chrystalized wish of a majority, and that majority must know that the 
responsibility of enforcement rests on them. Otherwise they are im- 
potent. We must remember we have got a government. We call it 
Republican, erroneously. We claim to be patriotic . If we are, we will 
make it what we call it that its flag may carry no false claim. 
Vested Rights Again. — 

The courts must be so organized and elected that they will be in- 
debted to the people for their positions and responsible to them for their 
work. Then will the vested rights of property and the vested rights of 
people have an equality of opportunity. Then will vested rights cover 
something more than the demands of great rascals, Law abiding citizens 
have some vested rights. Honest labor has some vested rights. The 
peaceful and upright part of the Nation has some vested rights. One 
of them is to curb and restrain the great rascals. One of them is to 
protect the orderly and law abiding part of the community from cor- 
porate plunderers as well as from footpads. One of them is to protect 
their homes and their families from the arrogant forces of predatory 
wealth. One of them is to revise our economic system, to mend our 
statute laws, to alter our Constitution so these results of public policy 
and official effort may be reached without tumult or disorder. 

The United States' Constitution guarantees to every state a 
Republican form of government ; but before it can consistently use its 



AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION 63 

power in that way, it must set the example of having one itself. It 
must be brought nearer the people so they may alter it at their pleas- 
ure. It must pro- vide a way for stopping the plunder of the laborer 
by the capitalist and for making some recompense for the wrongs of 
the past. 

5 n g XXIII. PROPOSED CHANGES. 

The following amendments to the Constitution and changes in 
government measures and methods will bring about the reforms dis- 
cussed and defended in the preceeding pages and settle on a sound 
foundation "The Problem of the Unemployed." 

FIRST. A State Iniatiative for Constitutional Amendments. The 
Constitution now requires Congress to call a convention on the petition 
of two-thirds of the states, for which the following should 
be substituted : 

Whenever the Legislature of any state wishes the Constitution al- 
tered, it shall pass a resolution embodying the proposed change or 
amendment, and send a copy to the U. S. Secretary of State, who shall 
without delay,transmit a copy thereof to the Governor of every state,with 
a request that it shall be brought before the State Legislature either at 
the next regular session, or at a special session, as the Governor may 
think advisable. The original resolution and the proposed amendment 
to the Constitution shall remain in the office of the Secretary of State of 
the United States until the proposed amendment has been ratified by 
the legislatures of three=fourths of the states, when it shall become 
valid as part of the Constitution; or until the endorsement of it shall 
have been withdrawn by every state legislature which had approved it. 

At present two-thirds of both houses of congress can submit amend- 
ments to the states for their approval or rejection; and it must call a 
convention when two-thirds of the states propose amendments. The 
above proposed amendment^ will give the states the power to amend 
the Constitution without a convention, and without congressional in- 
terference or consent. 

XXIV. AN APPEAL FROM THE COURTS TO THE PEOPLE 
THRU THEIR LEGISLATURES. 

SECOND. Whenever any law of the United States shall become 
void through the ruling or decree of any court of competent authority, 
it shall be submitted by the President to the Governors of the several 
states and by them to the legislatures thereof for their approval 
or rejection; together with a proposed amendment to the constitution 



64 HOW 

such as would be necessary to make valid the law which had been dis- 
credited ; the said amendment to be drafted by a commission consisting 
of members of the supreme court, and of the judiciary committee of 
each House of Congress. 

If the said law and the proposed amendment to the constitution 
shall be approved by the legislatures of three fourths of the states, the 
law shall be and remain in force the same as though it had not been dis- 
credited by the court, and the proposed amendment shall become a part 
of the Federal Constitution : Or if the proposed amendment shall be ap- 
proved and the law rejected, the amendment shall be in force as a part of 
the constitution. 

These two amendments would give the people an absolute control 
of their constitution; and the second would also probably prevent Con- 
gress from passing laws to defeat a known wish of the people, under the 
belief that they would be annuled by the courts. Nor could people 
then be deterred from demanding what they might think proper and 
just by the cry of "Unconstitutionality!" 

Other defects in our fundamental law, some of which have been 
considered and discussed for years; and others that may be entirely 
new to the reader, should be corrected with those already named, and 
especially the ones necessary to give us a Republican Government. 
The Constitution now provides that the President and Vice President 
shall be chosen by an electorial board; that the Senators shall be chosen 
by the state legislatures; and that the judicial power shall be vested in 
one Supreme Court, and such inferior courts as the congress may from 
time to time ordain and establish. All of these judges shall hold their 
offices during good behavior. 

They are now appointed by the President as also are postmasters, 
district attorneys and marshals. These officials should all be chosen by 
popular vote. Their terms of office should all be fixed : Some of them 
now fixed should be changed, and also the representation in the Senate. 
These necessary changes comprise article third of the proposed amend- 
ments, as follows : 

THIRD: The President shall be chosen by popular vote for a 
term of six years, and shall not be eligible to succeed himself, except 
after filling an unexpired term of not more than three years, or after an 
interim of not less than four years. 

The representation of each state in the Senate shall be one Senator 
for each seven Representatives and major fraction thereof which the 



AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION 65 

state has in the House; provided, that any state with less than seven 
Representatives shall have one Senator. 

The term of Senators shall be four years, and no Senator shall be 
eligible to succeed himself after ten years continuous service, except 
after an interim of not less than two years. 

The number of members of the House of Representatives shall not 
exceed four hundred; and they shall not succeed themselves after ten 
years of continuous service, except on the condition applying to the 
members of the Senate. The several states in making up their delega- 
tions to either House of Congress shall limit the number selected from 
any profession or occupation to one member plus one fifth the state's 
full delegation in that house, unless the said profession or occupation 
comprises at least five per cent, of the occupied classes of the state; and 
clause one of section five of article one shall be so amended as to give 
the states the power to enforce this proviso on the qualifications of their 
members of Congress. 

The members of the Supreme Court shall be chosen by popular vote 
and by districts,the boundaries of which shall be fixed, approximately, 
by population. Their terms of office shall be ten years and they may 
succeed themselves during "good behavior." The decisions of the 
court must be approved and supported by not less than two thirds of 
the members thereof to become effective. 

United States Marshals and District Attorneys shall be chosen by 
popular vote of their districts. 

Postmasters shall be elected either by the voters resident in the var- 
ious towns and cities, by the votes of the patrons of the offices, or by the 
city councils as Congress may decide. 

The Collectors and Surveyors of Customs may be appointed as now 
provided, or by some other authority, or elected, as Congress may pro- 
vide. The terms of office of the marshals, district attorneys, post- 
masters and customs officers shall be for four years. 

XXV. THE GRADUATED TAX. The Constitution now pro- 
vides that no direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion to the enum- 
eration herein before directed to be taken. Under that provision a state 
with 500,000 people and $500,000,000 value, would be taxed just the 
same as a state with 500,000 people and $5,000,000,000 value. The 
absurdity and injustice of such a process is apparent to all ; but it is 
more just than the in-direct taxes under which most of the nearly$3,ooo- 
000 a day that is now required to run the national government, is 



66 HOW 

raised. Most of the money that now goes into the National treasury 
is from a tax on what we consume. The government is now taxing us 
$12 each per year or $60 for a family of five. The average laborer and his 
family consume nearly as much of the taxed commodities as the pos- 
sessors of many millions of dollars. The injustice of this is considered 
in Part One of this work on page 7. 

The direct taxation provided for in the Constitution would pre- 
sumably be levied against the states ; and the states to raise the amount 
required would doit by a property tax; so the man with $100,000,000 
would pay 1000 times as much as the man with $100,000; while under 
the preseut indirect taxes of the government, when it asks the hod car- 
rier, living from hand to mouth, for $60 — possibly a months pay — it asks 
of Rockafeller about $100 which in some years has rolled into his pocket 
three times in a minute (see page 7 ante). A more unjust and iniquitous 
process of taxation could not be devised, and this stupendous wrong a 
Graduated Property Tax would immediately correct. It would also 
gradually correct other evils by its diffusive process. 

The railroads are estimated to be worth about one-sixth of the nat- 
ional valuation, hence they should (in a Repuhlic) pay one-sixth of the 
cost of the national government, or $168,000,000. When any one can 
find out what and how much of taxed commodities they consume, they 
can tell how little they pay for the support of the government. This 
$168,000,000 is mostly paid by labor 

To enable Congress to correct this injustice, and to levy taxes on 
anything and at any rate justice demands, the following substitute for 
clause four of section nine of article one of the Constitution, as proposed 
in House resolution No. 80, 1st session 55th Congress (July 22nd, 1897) 
is suggested, and in this list of needed changes is proposition the 

FOURTH: "Congress may impose taxes on incomes, inherit- 
tances, corporations, corporate stocks and obligations and estates of 
living persons, in excess of such exemptions as it shall deem reasonable, 
and may graduate the rate of taxation and impose higher rates per 
centum on large incomes, inheritances, and estates than on smaller ones" 

Line one of clause three of section two of article one would also have 
to be amended by striking out the three words "and direct taxes". 

These four propositions cover the amendments to the Federal Con- 
stitution necessary for the people to restore and maintain an equality of 
opportunity to all law abiding citizens, and to enable them to enact 
measures for restraining and controlling the operations of the "Male- 
factors of Great Wealth." 



USEING THE MONEY 67 

These are the great essentials; and they must be followed by legis- 
lation to improve the opportunities for a restoration of justice, which 
they'off er as follows : 

FIRST — A Progressive Property Tax and a Progressive Inherit- 
ance Tax, as provided in the bill discussed in Parts one and two of this 
work, or something similar. 

SECOND — The proceeds from these taxes after paying the cost 
of assessment and collection should be applied to paying all pensions; 
interest on the public debt; all expenses of the military establishments, 
State and National; to a general system of public improvements as 
outlined in the aforesaid bill as follows : Flood control by the consturc- 
tion of dykes in the highlands connecting adjacent watersheds, of suf- 
ficient capacity and so connected as to practically maintain a normal 
flow in the streams and thus extend and improve the waterways; the 
construction of canals; the improvement of highways, and acquisition 
and maintainance of forest parks and to the payment of old age pen- 
sions. 

This great fund expended in these ways, the military, pension, inter- 
est and public improvements cost would all be placed where they belong, 
on the swollen fortunes, until the swelling was properly and quietly 
reduced; and this would enable us to limit the indirect taxes to a per 
capita not to exceed $2 per annum, an amount about the same as the total 
expenses of the government in i860. One of the reasons given in the 
Republican platform of i860 why the National Government should be 
put in their hands, was the extravagance of the Democratic administra- 
tion whic h was governing the country for about $60,000,000 a year. The 
present admistration has expended $3,428,000,000 in the past four 
years which is millions above the cost in cash of four years of Civil 
war. If we are rich enough to continue this profligacy, those who get 
the greater benefit from our extravagance , should be forced to bear 
their share of the burden. ' 

The progressive Tax will put this burden where it belongs. 

The State Initiative on constitutional amendments will put the 
control of the constitution in the hands of the people and do away with 
pleading with, or trying to drive, an unwilling Congress to yield to a 
popular demand, 

The appeal to the State Legislatures on court decisions involving 
questions of constitutionality, will help the courts to more carefnl= 
ly consider both sides of such cases before rendering their decisions. 



68 HOW? 

XXVI. ONE THING MORE, 

about the Progressive Tax. Most and possibly all of us would like to be 
millionaires; and yet we have got but tenor twelve thousand. The Pro- 
gressive Tax would not decrease the number. It would increase it. 
The man with only a million would not be taxed; but when he got more 
it would call for a small dividend on the surplus. From two millions 
the tax rate would increase rapidly until it reached 18% at ten millions. 
So instead of decreasing the number of millionaires we would open an 
opportunity for a great increase in their numbers as the wily plunderers 
and mighty buccaneers were forced by government demands to grad- 
ually surrender their booty. 

Now, having seen how corruption may at least be reduced if no-f 
wholly rooted out by popular supervision of official acts, and the usu rpt 
ing oligarchy dethroned, the next great problem is who will undertake 
the task? Whaxan if they pull together correct the evils of misgovern - 
merit? Who hasjfower and patriotism and ought to have the will? 



WHO? 



"Swing inward, O gates of the future! 

Swing outward, ye doors of the Past! 
A giant is waking from slumber, 

And rending his fetters at last, 
From the dust where his proud tyrants found him, 

Unhonored and scorned and betrayed, 
He will rise in the sunlight around him, 

And rule in the realm he has made!" 

In the preceeding chapter we have seen how the Equality of Op- 
portunity — the heritage of all law-abiding citizens from republican in- 
stitutions — has been destroyed by the mighty forces of concentrated 
and organized capital. The injustice and iniquity of the situation are 
now universally known and conceded. We have also seen how the evil 
may be remedied and the blessings of Republican Institutions conferred 
on all our people. But we are here confronted with a greater question 
than, How? 

II. THE GREATER QUESTION IS, WHO? 

Who can bring about the great reforms which we find are essential 
to the Nation's future prosperity? 

Most classes of American labor are organized for their own protec- 
tion. Thru their organizations they have increased their daily pay and 
•decreased their hours of labor. Their efforts have been a success. It 
is organization that has brought them to better conditions. But the 
organization was based on a willingness to make personal sacrifice and to 
join in mutual efforts in which individual interests have sometimes been 
lost sight of for the good of a cause, which has brought them their re- 
ward. In this age, organization is the key to progress and success, 
and the unorganized class must remain the hewers of wood for the rest. 

In addressing the great Presbyterian meeting in Kansas City last 
May, Mr. John B. Lennon spoke only the truth in saying "The unorgan- 
ized working man or woman is of no more potency in the labor move- 
ment, or for civic betterment, or for moral uplift than are the dumb 
driven cattle." 

There is but one class of people in this country who can answer the 
grave questions and settle the great problems which I have brought up, 
and settle them right; and that is the Farmers. At present, unorgan- 
ized, they are as impotent as the dumb driven cattle though having 
the numbers to enforce any reasonable demand. 



70 NECESSITY FOR ORGANIZATION 

III. THE BASIS OF ORGANIZATION. 

Most of the trades unions are organized on a basis of pay and time. 
It is useless for the farmers to try to organize on any such basis. Their 
interests are so diversified, that it is impossible. But their organization 
on the basis I have outlined — the forcing of such changes in the govern- 
mental policy and methods as will make it the friend and helper of the 
industrial masses, instead of the friend of the "Malefactors of great 
wealth," will decrease their work hours and increase their pay as much 
as tho they organized on the basis of pay. 

Not only is it their duty to organize for their own protection, but 
it is their duty to organize for the defense of our institutions. 

They are the class and the only class who have the opportunity 
and the power to enforce the necessary measures. Not to do it is 
shirking a sacred duty. Not to do it they will remain the hewers of 
wood for the rest, and continue of "no more potency for civic better- 
ment or moral uplift than the dumb driven cattle." 

Organized, they can elect Congress and legislatures by each one 
acting thru his own party channels that will give them the state in- 
itiative for Constituitonal amendments and a Progressive Property Tax 
for the wiping out of the trusts by diffusing the force on which they are 
based. They can get legislation that will establish freight rates based 
on the physical value of the lines instead of on the amount of stock, 
bonds and certificates Wall Street has been sharp enough and lawless 
enough to load them with. These are the two great schemes or systems 
of wrong and injustice the farmers are suffering from — the two evils 
that coax the farmer boys to yield to the "Lure of the Cities." 

IV, FREIGHT RATES 

Railroad managers are figuring now on an advance in freight rates. 
Some roads have already decided on an advance. They base their 
demand for higher prices on the claim that there must be a change in 
one of three ways; either business must increase, wages be reduced or 
rates advanced. Other people who may not know as much of rail- 
roading in 1908 as they, know of a fourth way the situation may be 
corrected, and that is to reduce the dividends on watered stock. 

The people are more tired of paying interest on watered stock than 
the railroad officials are of the public demand for rate reduction. The 
total railroad capitalization now exceeds $16,000,000,000. Not 
less than one-half of this is water on which the people are paying inter- 
est the same as they are on actual investment. The following from the 



ALONG CONTEST 71 



Editor's Record of Harpers Magazine for November, 1873, P a S e 944> 
shows a view of the practice in it's infancy: 

WATERING STOCK 

Not only the railway companies, but other corporations, are called to accouat 
by the public press. The Independent has noticed the practice of "watering the 
stock" — issuing shares to stockholders for which nothing has been paid. Banks, 
insurance companies, and some other corporations are expressly prohibited from 
doing this, but railroad and other companies exercise a wider liberty. The nominal 
stock of a corporation affords but an imperfect idea of the amount of capital actually 
invested. A few years ago Comodore Vanderbilt, it is said, gave up the endeavor 
to acquire control over the Erie Railroad because he "could not fight a paper-mill." 
Yet the road over which he presides has indulged in the same practice to which he 
alluded. The total cost of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad was 
$63,299,624; but it is represented by and dividends are paid upon stock, bonded 
debt, and consolidation certificates amounting to $105,924,349 — an excess of over 
forty-two millions. A railroad in Ohio, it is asserted, receives by such hocus-pocus 
an annual dividend of forty per cent on its actual cost. 

Gas-light companies are also offenders. The Brooklyn Gas-light Company, with 
only an actual capital of $287,000, has issued $2,000,000 of stock, on which the annual 
dividends range somewhere from ten to twenty per cent. Similar things are true 
of other gas-light companies; and the endeavor on the part of legislative or local 
authority to ascertain the facts has been resisted with great energy and ingenuity. 
Other corporations, at the time of beginning business or subsequently, pursue the 
same practice, till the artless community suppose it to be a "vested right." It 
enables stockholders to realize large profits by selling their shares to others, and 
affords a pretext for requiring from the public a higher rate for service. The practice 
enters largely into the pending controversy between the railroad companies and the 
farmers of the West. Corporations of large means have ever met with much favor 
from legislative bodies. The controversy, however, has begun, and is likely to be a 
long one involving more questions and issues than is now imagined. 

The contest has already been a long one, and so far the railroads 
have the best of it because the farmers are not organized. 

The Kansas City Journal of January 29, 1904, has an interesting ar- 
ticle from a prominent Topeka banker, Mr. P. I. Bonebrake, discussing 
the same subject, and especially touching on the N Y. Central Road's 
inflated capital. Gov. Larrabee also in chap VI. of his work in the rail- 
way Problem, helps to reveal the operations of its early promoters and 
this is thought to be one of the best managed systems in the country. 

The figures of the past twenty years indicate no necessity for an ad- 
vance in rates to enable the roads to meet all reasonable obligations. 

V. RAILROAD VALUATION AND DIVIDENDS. 

The following averages deduced from tables in the World's Almanac, 



72 WHO? 

show the track mileage,the capitalization and the net receipts per mile of 
the railroads of the country at three periods : 

Year Total miles Stocks & Bonds pr mile Net rec'ts pr mile 

1886 125,000 $62,100 $2,400 

1896 / 81,000 59» 2 °o 1,830 

1906 218,000 68,580 3,620 

So the net receipts of the roads per mile in 1906 were ioo%more than 
in 1896 and 50% more than in 1886, in spite of the enormous increase in 
fixed charges and dividends This increase bears harder on the farmer 
than on any other class. 

The Union Pacific road in Kansas is capitalized at over $130,000 a 
mile. The cost of it was not over one-fifth of this, so Kansas farmers are 
paying rates to enable the road to pay interest and dividends on $100000 
a mile of watered stock. They can stop that robery when they become 
united enough to send to the legislature and put on the bench men in 
favor of stoping it; but it is not probable they can protect themselves 
from those organized forces of capital until they are organized them- 
selves. 

Organization is what they need; and it is what they must have to 
protect their interests and defend their homes. A Nation's perils and a 
People's needs incite them to organize. The pleadings of justice re- 
quire it. The Voice of Humanity commands it. The opportunity is 
ours. The duty is ours. The responsibility for neglect or delay will be 
ours. 

If every individual farmer waits for every other individual, the sun- 
set will come and find us fleeing in disorder a bewildered and stupified 
mob. 

If every State waits for every other State to lead, we will sneak out 
of ou r camps under the noonday sun before the advancing legions of 
the usurper. 

ORGANIZATION must be the watchword, if we would put the 
control of the constitution into the hands of the people. It must be the 
watchword if we would establish an opportunity for an appeal from the 
courts to the people on constitutional questions. 

ORGANIZATION must be the watchword if we would have the 
President and Congress and the Judiciary chosen by popular vote and 
their terms of office changed to meet present conditions and ideas. It 
must be the watchword if we would change the make-up of the Senate. 

ORGANIZATION must be the watchword if we would enact a pro- 
gressive tax law, and use a large part of the funds derived f r om a tax on 



ORGANIZE, 73 



swollen fortunes for improving our waterways, for building reservoirs for 
the storing of storm water, and for establishing forest parks. 

ORGANIZATION must be the watchword if the farmers are to help 
stop the discrimination in freight rates and give to railroad commissioners 
the power to limit dividends to a fair interest on the physical value of the 
roads. In this purpose the eommi<| ioners would have a powerful ally 
in the progressive tax which would ;radually restore competition as it 
scattered among the industrial class s the inordinate holdings of stock 
from the vaults of the multimillionaires which they would be forced to 
sell to meet their taxes. 

These great changes in our fudnamental law and in government 
policies cannot be brought about without the help of the farmers — with- 
out organization for that specific purpose; and if eleven or twelve mil- 
lion people who are engaged in agricultural pursuits will organize for that 
purpose, this generation will reap of the benefits therefrom. If they will 
not organize they will continue where they are; they will continue to 
work more hours per day for less pay than any other important class of 
our people. 

VI. CAN THE FARMERS UNITE, 

It is a big proposition for 11,500,000 people to come together for a 
specific purpose, and it will never be if each one waits for someone else to 
pull or push him. Individual effort can solve the problem. Individual 
effort; each in his own locality, can start a wave of enthusiasm. 

Reader! If you approve the measures herein defended; if you be- 
lieve in their justice and favor their adoption, you can readily find six 
others cf like belief who will join you to form a club. My belief is that 
nineteen farmers out of twenty would support the move if assured of the 
general support of the class; and the best way for them to do is to put 
their shoulders to the wheel regardless of what others may do. Indi- 
vidual effort must be invoked to bring about an organization. Don't 
wait for some self-appointed committee or self-chosen officials to pull 
you into line, but ORGANIZE your own neighborhood or school dis- 
trict and include in your constitution a pledge that each Club or Union 
organized, shall organize one more as long as unorganized farmers are 
within reach. Faithfully carried out this will carry the Union to the 
four corners of the land. 

When ei°;ht or ten clubs are started in a county, then thev should 
call a meeting to organize the county and adopt temporarily a constitu- 
tion, by-laws and ritual; and when several counties in a state are or.r , an - 



74 WHO? 

zed a state meeting should be called by the county presidents to form a 
state organization, and proclaim their purpose not only to become a 
factor for civic betterment, but to help give the control of the consti- 
tution to the people; to establish a Republican form of government; to 
bring the Judiciary into harmony with the popular will; to make needed 
changes in the method of choosing public officials, and their terms of 
office; and to restore to the people a part of the swollen fortunes of the 
Plutocracy — which the masses have earned and lost — by Progressive 
Taxation and Public Improvements. 

Then pass the watchword and countersign down the rural 'phone 
lines: ORGANIZE! ORGANIZE'.! ORGANIZE!!! 






Lb Ap '09 



NOV 28 1901 



Graduated Taxation* 

The Nation now has an eminent leader who realizes the neces- 
sity for and the possibilities of such a measure to stop the plunder- 
ing of the industrial masses by the great Trust Promoters. 

The incidents and rumblings of the 1906 election are prophetic 
and a timely warning. 

They show that American Labor will soon use its power to go 
out of its bondage to Predatory Wealth. Aggregated capital is go- 
ing to be controlled; Inordinate fortunes will be limited; Concen- 
trated plunder will be attacked and scattered either by the levelling 
forces of disorder or by the mild, the just, the certain, and the 
peacable process of progressive taxation. 

One or the other of these is just as inevitable as the coming of 
the North Wind. 

THE QUESTION IS, THE VESTED RIGHTS OF THE MAN 
OR THE DOLLAR. WHICH DO YOU SUPPORT AND DEFEND 
FIRST? 

The Kansas Legislature has twice endorsed a corrective meas- 
ure; first in 1893 and again in 1897. It urges us to follow the better 
way. 

A list of other books and papers by the author of "Swollen 
Fortunes and the Problem of the Unemployed," all of which advo- 
cate a Progressive Tax for reducing, controlling and limiting in- 
ordinate wealth is given below. 

A CRISIS FOR THE HUSBANDMAN. Third edition. With supplement 1889, 
50c. (Out of print, but the 3d, 4th and 5th lectures can be had. Each 10c.) 

A LESSON OF TO-DAY AND A QUESTION OF TO-MORROW. A cr ^ipaign 
spesch of 1892. Each 10c. 

A SUNFLOWER TANGLE. An address to the People's Party Convention in 

1894. Each 5c. (Cutting the Gordian Knot is sequel.) 

THE FREE COINAGE OF AMERICAN LABOR INTO HONEST DOLLARS. 

1895. Each 5c. 

CUTTING THE GORDIAN KNOT. 1896. Each 25c. 

MAN VERSUS MAMMON. With petition to and Concurrent Resolution cf the 
Kansas Legislature of 1897. Each 10c. 

"A PROTEST ON THE COUNCIL DOOR." 1898. (Out of print. Can be found 
in supplement to tbe Independent News, Girard, Kans., of October 28, 1898.) 

The above prices include postage. Address the Author at 
Girard, Kansas. 



Thompson Co. Printers, Carthage, Mo, 



